1636: The Devil's Opera

by Eric Flint

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Gotthilf hadn’t just pulled the trigger as fast as he could. There had been aim involved, even though he was shooting quickly. He popped the cylinder out of the frame, triggered the release into his left hand, snatched a fresh cylinder off the counter and loaded it, then swung it back into the frame. In a moment, it was lined up with the left target, and he began squeezing the trigger again.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

  The smoke from the black powder was getting thick around his position, despite the electric fans that were blowing air into the space. Gotthilf repeated the drill to replace the cylinder, even faster this time, and took aim at the right target.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

  He laid the revolver down on the counter, smoke wisping from the barrel. The ranger officer blew his whistle again. “No shooting!” After a moment, he blew it again. “Range is cold. Clear the targets!”

  The target spotter ran out, grabbed Gotthilf’s targets and ran them up to him, then ran back to his place behind the barrier.

  Everyone gathered around as Gotthilf laid the targets out side by side. Byron whistled.

  “Good shooting, partner. Twenty-one shots in less than a minute, and most of them landed in the center of mass, except for this one,” he pointed to one that grazed the head outline of one of the targets, “which probably took off an ear, and that one,” Gotthilf winced at the hole in the groin area of the outline, “which I figure has the guy singing soprano now.”

  Laughter and ribald jests broke out around them. A couple of the other shooters clapped him on the back before they headed back to their own positions, talking about what they had seen.

  “…got to get me one of those…”

  “You know how much they cost?”

  “…don’t care…give up beer if I have to…”

  “So that’s a lot of firepower,” Byron said over the background conversations, nudging the big revolver with a finger. “You really think you need that much?”

  “That and more,” Gotthilf said, pulling three more cylinders out of his pockets and setting them on the counter. “I have a bad feeling about what’s brewing in Magdeburg.”

  Byron whistled.

  * * *

  Amber Higham strode down the hall accompanied by Andrea Abati and Hermann Katzberg. She arrived at the knot of her people milling around in the hallway, and said, “What’s going on? Why aren’t you in the room getting ready for rehearsal?”

  “Someone else is in the room,” Dieter said. “Listen.”

  And when she stopped and paid attention to the noises floating through the hallway, sure enough, she could hear the sounds of the rehearsal room piano being played. Played loudly. Being hammered, actually.

  “Classical stuff,” she remarked. “Not Bach. Doesn’t sound like Chopin. Liszt? Brahms?”

  “No,” Hermann said with a grin. “The last movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata.’ And by the piece I know who’s in the room. Go ahead and go in. She will not notice.”

  Amber opened the door and stuck her head through the opening, whereupon she glimpsed the back of Marla Linder, ponytail swaying behind her as her hands flashed up and down the keyboard, alternating rolling arpeggios with crashing chords. She opened the door wide and motioned everyone into the room. They all gathered in the back of the room behind the piano, and simply watched the artist at work. Amber remembered Mary saying something about when Marla practiced the piano she shut out the entire world. Sure seemed like she was this morning.

  In another minute or so, the piece came to its ending as Marla played arpeggiated runs up and down the keyboard, leading into the final statement of the theme of the piece, followed by several percussive chords. She took her hands off the keys, but held the sustain pedal down and let the final chord resonate in the room.

  The clapping started as soon as Marla released the pedal. Her head jerked around, and Amber thought she blushed. She stood quickly, edged out from between the piano and the bench, and said, “Oh, come on now, stop it. I was just practicing.”

  “Maybe so,” Amber replied, “but your practicing is better than most folks’ performance.” She waved everyone forward to start preparing for the rehearsal.

  Marla snorted, which amused Amber. It wasn’t a ladylike snort. But then, with Marla’s diaphragm, a lot of air would get moved at a moment like that.

  “Not hardly,” Marla said. “I lost three months. I’m as rusty as a piece of old barbed wire. I’m starting to get my singing chops back, but I’ve still got a ways to go with the piano, so I’m grabbing every chance I can to practice. And let’s not even talk about the flute.”

  “That sounded good,” Hermann contributed from where he was arranging his music on the piano. “I did not hear any clunkers.”

  “Oh, I’ve quit making the easy mistakes,” Marla said with a grimace. “Now I’ve got to quit making the hard ones.”

  “Enough about the piano.” Amber spoke firmly. “Now is the time for the voice.”

  The vocalists warmed up quickly, and they swung into the rehearsal.

  Voices were clear today, and everyone seemed to have plenty of stamina. Even so, Amber didn’t push them too hard. After a solid morning of rehearsing, she finally called it to an end.

  “Okay, listen up everyone.” When they were grouped in front of where she sat on her stool, she said, “Good rehearsal. Last one for a couple of days. Today’s Friday. Tomorrow we start fitting costumes. I want the soloists here in the morning, chorus in the afternoon. Everyone got that?”

  Nods from all the group.

  “Good. Spend Sunday with your friends and family, because that’s the last time you get to before opening night. Monday we start rehearsing in the auditorium at the opera hall. It’s going to be long days and even longer nights for the next few weeks. Things are going well, but don’t let up on it, okay?”

  Grins from some, sober looks from others, but nods all around again.

  “Great. See you tomorrow.”

  She waved at them, and they scattered.

  Left by herself in an empty room, Amber sagged on her stool for a long moment, pushed her glasses up into her hair, and scrubbed her hands across her face. Lord, she wasn’t getting any younger, and boy, could she tell it. The last few weeks before any premiere were always horrendous, but even at the height of her professional acting and directing days she’d never had anything as important as this show resting on her shoulders. Some big shot investor’s money, yeah. The reputations of the actors, sometimes the reputations of the writers, yeah. But never anything that could potentially affect the future of a nation. And she was doing it with the equivalent of one and a half seasoned professionals and a bunch of serious but newbie amateurs.

  Amber scrubbed her face again, dropped her glasses back on her nose, and got back on her feet to start gathering her stuff.

  One thing about it, she thought to herself. If she had to do something like this, at least she was working with dynamite material. She wasn’t a fan of opera, as such, although she did like Gilbert and Sullivan. But Gronow’s libretto was stellar. And although she was not the consummate musician that Marla and Andrea Abati were, even she could tell that Heinrich her husband had written a very good score.

  Amber shrugged her coat on, looked around the room one more time, and closed the door firmly behind her. One step closer to opening night.

  Chapter 36

  Stephan Burckardt carried the leather bag in and set it down on his employer’s desk with a thump.

  “That’s the last of it, Herr Schmidt.”

  Schmidt loosened the neck of the bag, reached into it, and pulled out a handful of silver coins. He looked them over, then tipped his palm and let them slide back into the bag, which he then retied.

  “Took you long enough,” Schmidt snarled. “I needed it three days ago.” He leaned back in his chair. “Be gone. But be here early in the morning.”

  Stepha
n didn’t need to be told twice that he could leave. His keys were in his hand before he was out of Schmidt’s office. One trice to lock the file cabinets; one trice to shovel papers into a drawer and lock his desk; half a trice to grab his hat and coat off the pegs they hung from; and he was out the door before the master could change his mind.

  Outside, he looked around, trying to decide whether to head across the Big Ditch to his room and get a good night’s sleep, or to the nearest tavern for a mug of ale. He licked his lips. Sleep sounded good, but so did ale, and seemingly without a conscious decision his feet took him in the direction of the Chain. It had been a long few days. Surely he’d be okay for the length of time it took to down a mug. And Master Schmidt had released him early enough that he’d still have plenty of time for sleep after taking a mug’s worth.

  Before long he came to the low doorway into the tavern and ducked through it. Once inside, he looked around, saw that the crowd was still light. He released the breath he had been holding, relaxed, and headed for the counter where Veit the bartender was serving up mugs of ale.

  A minute later, Stephan was seated at a scrap of a table in a back corner, elbows propped on the top and sipping at the ale. Sipping because it was better than Veit’s usual lot, and actually could be allowed to pass over the tongue slowly without inducing disgust or nausea or comparisons to the inside of one’s oldest boot.

  Stephan wanted nothing more than to just let his mind empty out, but it kept worrying at Master Schmidt. He wasn’t sure what was going on, for the master was being remarkably tight-lipped about it, but he was certain that something out of the ordinary was in the wind. If for no other reason than the fact that the master had had him gather as much coin as he could quietly manage, exchanging what USE paper scrip was on hand with a few of the other merchants and those guild treasuries who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut. It wasn’t the first time that a merchant of Magdeburg had needed solid coin, after all, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Stephan knew who would keep a closed mouth, and that was who he had approached. Of course, one usually paid a premium when one desired quick service, but the master knew that as well as Stephan did, and had actually seemed satisfied in a sour sort of way at the sums that had been amassed.

  But why? Stephan kept circling back to that question. Unfortunately, every time he arrived at it, the answer was still “I don’t know,” and that would start the process all over again.

  Something was going on.

  * * *

  “Friend, you look like you’re at the end of a long day,” someone remarked. Samuel Bauer looked up in startlement to see a stranger sitting on the stool across the table from him. He’d been so wrapped up in his beer he hadn’t even perceived the man approaching.

  He shook his head to clear his head, and shrugged. “Yah, a long day. But then, every day is long, right?” He raised his mug and sipped.

  “True, true,” the other man said with a chuckle. “At least for those of us who have to work for our bread and salt and hope the masters and foremen have the money to pay us at the end of the day.”

  They chatted back and forth, commiserating with each other on the evils of working for an uncaring boss, and congratulating each other on having won out so far by simply surviving. They had a friendly argument about the merits of Samuel’s job as a ledger poster for Master Georg Schmidt, and the other fellow’s job as a bricklayer.

  The other man bought the second round when Samuel discovered his mug was empty, so it was only fair that Samuel bought the third. And somewhere after that he kind of lost track of a lot of things.

  When he was awakened the next morning by his wife, his head was throbbing to the beat of a demon’s hammer and the taste in his mouth was beyond foul. And as he stumbled down the streets toward the bridge across the Big Ditch, he muzzily wondered what had become of his new friend…or even what his name was. He remembered it started with a P. Peter? Paulus?

  * * *

  Schardius looked around the main foyer of the opera hall. Good, no one was in sight. He slipped a key out of his pocket, walked over and unlocked a single door at the far end of the foyer. After stepping through it, he locked it again.

  He smiled in the darkness at the thought of how surprised Frau Higham and others would be if they knew he had that key. It was amazing what a few pieces of silver could buy from someone low enough in the social ranks that everyone forgot about him…like the building custodian.

  Schardius pulled a Grantville device from his pocket, cranked the handle several times, and smiled again as light bloomed in the darkness from the flashlight. He’d paid good money for the battery-less flashlight. Good money. And this wasn’t the first time that he’d found use for it.

  Directing the light ahead of him, he continued his explorations of the nonpublic areas of the opera hall.

  * * *

  “Take a deep breath, dear.”

  Marla obliged the seamstress by expanding her diaphragm to its maximum, which of course caused her waistline to also expand. The seamstress’ hands fluttered around her torso, checking the fit and making sure the cloth draped right.

  “Right, dear, you can relax now.”

  Air whooshed out of Marla’s lungs. The seamstress smiled as the expired breath made the frills of her cap flutter a bit.

  “Move for me, please, how you would on the stage.”

  Marla decided she was getting a bit tired of being this woman’s puppet—she wasn’t nearly as personable as Frau Schneider, the seamstress who made most of Marla’s clothes. But she stalked grandly back and forth a few times as directed, humming one of the big arias; then stood and made several of the grand gestures that the part of Guinevere called for.

  “That’s good, dear. Did you feel anything binding on you?”

  The seamstress looked to be older than Aunt Susan, Marla thought, maybe even as old as her grandmother. She’d let her get away with “dear,” but if she started using the down-time equivalent of “Hon,” things would commence to get fractious, as Aunt Susan used to say.

  “I think I did,” Marla said in response to the question. She moved her left hand and arm in a somewhat contorted gesture. “It felt tight in the shoulder right…” She stopped in mid-movement. “…there.”

  “Hold there, please.”

  The seamstress stepped up close and peered at the fabric of the costume, running her fingers up and down the seams.

  “Ah,” she said. “I see the problem. It will be easy to fix. Thank you, dear, you can take that one off now.” She turned away and called to another woman, “Frau Ballauf.”

  Marla stepped behind the partition screen with alacrity as the other two women bent their heads in conversation over a clipboard. That was the last costume she had to try on. It had been a long morning, and she was ready to get back into her jeans and sweater.

  Amber Higham had mobilized the production dressers for the costume fitting. Marla turned her back to the other young woman, who began unbuttoning the buttons down the back of the costume. After a moment, Marla was able to shuck the top of the costume forward and begin loosening the waistband of the skirt. Another few moments, and she was free of all that cloth, skinning her way back into soft worn denim and her favorite bulky yellow sweater.

  “Thanks, Sophie,” she said as her head popped through the top of the sweater. “I think we’re going to need all the practice we can get dealing with this stuff. The costume changes are going to be fun,” she rolled her eyes to match her sarcastic tone, “especially the two in the third act.”

  The dresser smiled as she gathered up the skirt to clip it onto the special hanger made for it. “You will do fine, Marla.”

  “That’s we, partner,” Marla replied as she ran her fingers through her long hair, fluffing it out a bit. No pony-tail today; she wasn’t in the mood for it for some reason. “I won’t be able to do it without you.”

  * * *

  “Schardius, your time is coming, and that, soon,” Georg Schmidt snarled
, slipping as he ducked into an alley. It took him a moment to regain his balance; then he went on, unaware that he had been overheard.

  * * *

  Marla gave a quick wave to the dresser and stepped out into the main room again. She spotted Amber standing by the door and headed that way.

  “Hey, Amber.”

  “Marla.”

  She settled in beside the director and leaned back against the wall.

  “So how’s it going?”

  Amber grunted. “You tell me. Can you live with the costumes?”

  “Yep.” Marla grinned. “They’re actually not too bad. I was afraid they’d be skin-tight or something, and these folks have never heard of Spandex.”

  “Good.” The woman that the seamstress had talked to came up to them, carrying her clipboard. She nodded to Marla, and Amber said, “Sorry, I should have introduced you. Frau Ballauf, this is Marla Linder. Marla, this is Frau Frontilia Ballauf. She’s my new administrative assistant and stage-manager-in-training. I borrowed her from Lady Beth Haygood at the school.”

  “Stole, actually, after I had only been there two days,” Frau Ballauf said dryly. “Frau Haygood felt she had been—how did she put it—strong-armed after your conversation.”

  “She’ll get over it.” Amber waved a hand in a pooh-pooh gesture. The two women had a quick conversation about a couple of the items on the clipboard, then Frau Ballauf nodded to Marla again and turned back to the controlled chaos in the room.

  “Frontilia?” Marla whispered with a giggle. “That sounds like something out of a bad Star Trek movie. Can’t be from any part of Germany I’ve ever heard of.”

  “She’s actually from the Vogtland.”

  Marla tilted her head at that.

  “Southwest of Dresden,” Amber clarified.

  “Ah.” Dresden, Marla had heard of. Anyone in Germany who possessed a spark of awareness had some idea of where Dresden was. The siege of that city by a Swedish army was, after all, one of the top three topics of conversation/arguments/disagreements in Magdeburg. “So what’s she doing here?”