1636: The Devil's Opera

by Eric Flint

  Hans’ left hand dropped down to pinion Otto’s hand on the hilt of the knife. His right hand flew out to grasp the front of the other man’s throat. With a grunt and a heaving twist, Hans crushed and tore his foe’s larynx.

  Dropping the convulsing Otto to die where he lay, Hans turned back to Jurgen, who was standing still and clutching his bleeding nose. Still holding the knife in place in his wounded side, hissing at the fresh pain felt with every movement of his body, Hans delivered a kick to demolish Jurgen’s right knee. Then he aimed a boot at the other man’s throat. But before he could deliver it, he felt a blow on his back, and a fresh stinging. He turned his head slowly, to see Ernst backing away, staring first at his knife and then at Hans. Obviously the coat and wrappings had played their part one more time.

  Hans followed through with the kick to Jurgen’s throat. The crunch was a pleasing validation that there was another foe down. All the while he stared at Ernst, standing wide-eyed in the moonlight.

  “Come take me now, Ernst,” Hans husked. He could feel his legs starting to tremble, his arms droop from the blood loss. He didn’t have long.

  Ernst obviously hesitated. Hans had taken out a half-dozen of his men before his eyes. Four of them were dead and another might well be.

  On the other hand, it had to be obvious that Hans was hurt.

  Hans waited. He had no hope of chasing Ernst if he ran. He hunched over a little more, not altogether feigning hurt.

  Ernst stepped closer, then with a rush he stabbed at Hans. The knife didn’t penetrate the rib wrappings. Just as Hans gripped his shoulder, Ernst drew the knife back and thrust again.

  “Die, damn you!”

  This time the knife went in low, between the hips and below the wrappings. It was sharp, and penetrated the trousers, skin, and abdomen with ease.

  Hans hissed at another wave of cold pain. This one would kill him, he knew. The blood was flowing faster. He so much wanted to rant and rail at Ernst, tell him what he thought of him and his master the devil Schardius. But there was no time.

  He wrenched Otto’s knife out of his body with his left hand, turned it, and thrust it into Ernst’s belly. Hans watched as the other man’s eyes opened wide in shock and his mouth dropped open. He gave a heave with his shoulder, and ripped Ernst open from navel to sternum. Ernst’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed, sliding off of the blade of the knife.

  Hans dropped Otto’s knife and stumbled a step or two away before he dropped to his knees, then sagged to one side and rolled onto his back.

  “Thank you, God,” he murmured, “for allowing me to defend my sister. If my hands are too bloody to enter heaven, then I will enter hell knowing that she is safe.”

  The darkness closed around his vision, narrowing until only the whiteness of the moon could be seen. As that grayed out and the darkness continued to close in, one last thought passed through his mind.

  Consequences.

  Chapter 63

  Franz awoke to a feeling of weight on his chest and something tickling his nose. He opened his eyes to see Marla’s face just inches from his own, a tress of her own long hair in her fingers teasing his upper lip and nostrils.

  When she saw his eyes open, she swooped in for a languorous and lingering kiss, then bounced up to sit beside him in the bed.

  “It’s opera day, Franz. Get up! We have so much to do!”

  She jumped to her feet and began getting ready for the day. Franz rolled over on his side, and watched her gathering clothing and washing her face, all the while humming a melody that he finally recognized as “I Feel Pretty,” from West Side Story. One of these days he hoped that Andrea Abati would follow through with his oft-stated plan to stage that musical. He would really like to see how the Adel and the patricians and the bürgermeisters would react to it. Probably not going to happen soon, though, given how dissonant the music was. One day, though.

  “Franz!” Marla pounced on him again, dragging on his hand. “Get up!”

  No help for it, he decided. And in truth, today was going to be a busy day. So he sat up and swung his feet over the side of the bed.

  It didn’t take long to prepare. Franz donned his normal conductor’s suit: black velvet long trousers in the up-time style, and a short-waisted royal blue velvet jacket over a white shirt. He ran a comb through his hair, and he was ready to go.

  Normally it would have taken Marla somewhat longer than that, but since she would be putting on stage makeup at the opera house and arranging her hair to match her costumes in the performance, she had just thrown on a shirt and her jeans.

  “Ready to go?” Franz asked.

  “Ready,” Marla replied, pulling a pair of brown leather gloves out of her coat pockets.

  “What happened to your other gloves?” Franz asked, opening the door for her.

  “I guess I’ve lost them. I thought I left them at the opera house, but when I went back to look for them the next day, they weren’t there.”

  “Too bad. I was just getting used to pink, purple and green all in the same knit.”

  Franz ducked as Marla swung at him.

  * * *

  Gotthilf was already gone the next morning when Simon came down to the eating room. Ursula and Margarethe were there; Ursula sitting quietly picking at a roll, Margarethe chattering about something.

  “I’m going to go look for Hans,” he announced baldly. “I’ll be home when I find him.” He turned to leave. His last sight was of Ursula sitting with a forlorn look on her face.

  * * *

  Byron and Gotthilf were back in the captain’s conference room. The mayor had come to them, rather than making them do the walking.

  “So,” Gericke said when they finished their recital. “Four dead men, and you suspect Master Schardius on the basis of the word of a dock worker?”

  When put that way, it did sound weak, Gotthilf had to acknowledge to himself.

  “That, and some very strong instinct,” Byron said. His voice was firm.

  “Instinct,” Gericke said flatly.

  Neither Byron nor Gotthilf responded to that.

  Gericke sat back in his chair. Nothing was said for a long moment, then he sighed.

  “Your ‘instinct’ has proven right before,” the mayor acknowledged. “I cannot ignore that. But if you are wrong…if Master Schardius is indeed blameless, as he will protest, then your careers will be ended, and likely mine as well, and he will crush us all in court for slander. How certain are you of this?”

  “Very,” Byron said. Gotthilf backed him with a firm nod.

  Gericke sighed again.

  “All right, continue, but God help us all if you’re wrong. What more do you need?”

  Gotthilf pulled a couple of forms from his folder. “Search warrants, Mayor, for his residence and place of business. In duplicate.”

  “Ah,” Gericke said. “I must change hats, as you up-timers would say, and be Magistrate Gericke for the next few moments.

  Captain Reilly passed a ball-point pen to the mayor, and a minute later Gotthilf had one set of the forms in his folder and was folding the other set to go in his jacket.

  “You’d better be right,” the captain said as he followed the mayor out of the conference room.

  * * *

  Ciclope staggered out of his rooming house. He cursed himself for drinking so much ale the night before.

  Today was the day, he decided. Today he would take down the target of Herr Schmidt’s fear, earn his fee, and leave this forsaken city. He hungered for Venice, and it was time to leave.

  * * *

  Andreas Schardius frowned. The doors to the warehouse portion of the factorage were closed. He stormed through the doors of the office. “Why is the warehouse not open?” he demanded of his secretary.

  That worthy shrugged, and said, “Herr Mann has not arrived, nor have any of the other warehouse workers. We felt it was best to leave it closed up until someone arrived to take charge.”

  “Hummph,” Schardius s
norted. “Did Ernst not say something about being late? Do you know anything about why he might be late?”

  “Herr Mann said nothing to us, and he was still here last night when we left. But it might have something to do with the deaths.”

  “Deaths?” That word stopped Schardius in mid-tirade.

  “Yah. The Polizei came yesterday, and told him that some of our warehouse workers were dead, killed in a fight. He and the others left right after that.”

  Schardius’ mind churned at that revelation. A couple of things became clear: Ernst was seeking Metzger, and Metzger was not going to come easily. And that was probably why he and his men were still not here this morning; they were still looking for Metzger. So; mystery solved.

  “Carry on,” Schardius ordered. “Notify our customers that there won’t be any deliveries today. Check the arrival schedule; I don’t believe we have a barge coming in today, but make sure. Tell Ernst to notify me immediately when he appears. He’ll know where I am.”

  * * *

  Gotthilf looked around at the bodies. “It’s almost like a slaughter house,” he muttered.

  “Not enough blood for that,” Byron responded. “There’s only two with stab wounds. The rest of them he just beat to death.”

  They were waiting for the police photographer to finish taking pictures of the crime scene and the bodies.

  “We screwed up,” the up-timer muttered. “We should have found him.” He stepped out of the way of the photographer. “We should have found him,” he repeated, looking over at his partner.

  “It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t want to be found,” Gotthilf replied.

  Neither one of them drew any comfort from that thought.

  * * *

  Simon walked out the front door of the grand townhouse, hoping that he hadn’t just lied to Ursula. The problem was, he had no idea where Hans could be.

  For lack of anything else, Simon started back the way he and Hans usually went to the fight arena; down the Gustavstrasse, across the bridge over the Big Ditch into the Neustadt, heading for the gate at the northwest corner of the city.

  He wasn’t far from the gate when he glanced down a side street as he crossed it and saw a gathering of people. A cold hand gripped his heart and his feet took him that direction before his conscious mind realized it.

  He pushed through the crowd. When he got to the front of it, he was up against a piece of rope that was rigged as a barrier between the shells of two burned buildings left from the sack of the city that hadn’t yet been torn down. There were several men standing or walking around, and he could see what appeared to be several bodies lying on the ground. The cold hand around his heart got colder.

  * * *

  “So what do we do now?” Gotthilf asked.

  “I don’t know,” Byron muttered.

  Dr. Schlegel came over to them, tugging gray leather gloves back on after looking at each corpse. “You can probably tell cause of death as well as I can,” he announced. “Time of death was obviously last night some time, but because of the cold I can’t be more certain than that until I do the medical exams.”

  “Yeah,” Byron sighed, “it’s pretty obvious what happened. I’m not too sure that pinning down when it happened will be very useful in this case, but you never can tell. Let me know what you find out.”

  The doctor nodded, then turned and began issuing instructions to his attendants as they waited for the photographer to finish his work.

  “Sergeant! Sergeant Hoch!”

  They both looked around at the call.

  “Oh, great. It’s the kid,” Byron said. “How do we break the news to him?”

  * * *

  Friedrich von Logau looked up from his notepad as a burgher with a stern face jostled him going by. He looked across the table to his friends.

  “Who was that?”

  Johann Gronow leaned forward and murmured, “That was Master Andreas Schardius, the leading corn factor in Magdeburg. A very wealthy man, is Master Schardius, with connections to the Regierender Rat in Old Magdeburg.”

  “Rumor has it,” Plavius joined in, “that he paid for all the cost of staging the opera.”

  “No,” Gronow said. “Only a third. I heard it from Frau Higham herself.”

  “He is also rude,” Friedrich said, adjusting his chair.

  “Imagine that,” Seelbach laughed.

  * * *

  Schardius checked his pocket watch as he left the coffee house. Hours to go yet before the opera began. He still steered his steps in the direction of the opera house.

  * * *

  Simon grasped the rope tightly as Sergeant Hoch approached.

  “Hello, Simon.”

  “Yes, Sergeant. Please, is it Hans?”

  The sergeant looked solemn. “You shouldn’t be here, Simon.”

  The cold hand turned his heart to ice. “Please, Sergeant. Is it Hans?”

  Sergeant Hoch hesitated, looked over his shoulder, then nodded. Simon closed his eyes. He felt the sergeant pat his shoulder.

  Simon opened his eyes. “Please. I have to see.”

  “I don’t know,” Sergeant Hoch said.

  Just then Lieutenant Chieske walked over. “What’s going on here?”

  The sergeant explained that Simon wanted to see. Simon poured his yearning into his eyes. It must have worked, for the lieutenant looked at him and nodded. Sergeant Hoch lifted the rope and Simon bent under it.

  “Stay with me and don’t go wandering around,” the sergeant cautioned. Simon nodded.

  It was only a few steps. One of the other men moved aside at a word from the lieutenant, and Simon could see everything. There were several bodies lying on the ground. All dead. And yes, much as he didn’t want to admit it, one of them was Hans. He lay on his back with a knife hilt sticking out of his abdomen.

  “It must have been some fight,” Lieutenant Chieske mused. The lieutenant continued talking, but Simon didn’t hear him. His eyes were fixed on his friend. Hans would never again whistle tunelessly, never again laugh when Simon called Tobias “Ferret-face,” never again put his hat on Simon’s head and grin when it dropped down to his ears. Hans was gone, and there was a hole in his heart now.

  “‘All men die, Simon.’” The memory of Pastor Gruber’s voice came to him. “‘What matters is how you die.’” Samson indeed, Simon thought. “‘So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life,’” he murmured.

  “What did you say?” Lieutenant Chieske asked.

  “Nothing.” Simon gave one final glance to his friend. “Fraulein Ursula will want his body.”

  “It will be released from the morgue after the investigation is complete.”

  Simon took a deep breath and looked around. No one was close by. “It was Master Schardius, wasn’t it?” he asked quietly, almost in a whisper. The two policemen said nothing else, simply drew him farther away from the crowd and the other policemen and waited.

  In a whisper, Simon told them about the conversation he overheard after Hans’ last fight. It didn’t take long. The two policemen looked more and more intent as he spoke.

  “You’re sure he said Vogler?” Lieutenant Chieske asked, keeping an eye on the crowd.

  “Yes.”

  The lieutenant looked at the sergeant. “Schardius, and tied to Vogler,” Sergeant Hoch breathed. “Delt we were looking for…but a link to Vogler. That answers so many questions.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I wish we could have learned this another way,” Lieutenant Chieske said in a low voice. “What Hans finally told us and what you’ve just told us is important, and will help us continue our investigation. I just wish it hadn’t come to us at so high a price.”

  Simon blinked back tears. “Hans was a hard man,” he said. “He had trouble trusting watchmen, even you new policemen. But in the end, he told you.”

  Before he left the scene of Hans’ death, Simon looked back at his friend one more time. After a moment, he heard
a whine and looked up. There was a dog looking at him from another ruined wall. “Schatzi? Is that you?” The dog whined again with a slight wag of the tail, standing over something dark lying on the ground. Simon walked over and picked it up. The dog whined again, then disappeared behind a mound of rubble.

  Simon looked down. He was holding Hans’ hat. There was no mistaking it. Simon knew every spot and wrinkle and crease and nick on it. That brought the loss home to him even stronger. He stood there with his eyes burning for a long moment, trying to hold his feelings in, but they burst forth and he began to sob, tears running down his cheeks. He turned his back on the Polizei and the crowds as the cold hand around his heart expanded to fill his entire being.

  Hans was dead. Simon’s world was now a very dark place indeed.

  * * *

  Friedrich von Logau was seated at a table in Walcha’s Coffee House with his friends. This was not unusual. Friedrich was not doodling with a new epigram, however, and that was a bit unusual. Instead, he was listening to Karl Seelbach read from his latest essay on the natural order of government.

  He was also thinking about getting out his notepad and beginning an epigram. Karl was not the greatest reader in the world, and his approach to the topic was…arid, to say the least.

  Friedrich’s attention was distracted by a movement. For a moment, he felt as if he had been transported back two months, for approaching their table were Marla Linder and Franz Sylwester. He raised a hand to interrupt Seelbach’s drone.

  “We have guests, my friends.”

  They all turned to see who it was. When they saw Frau Linder, chairs began to scrape on the floor as each man stood. They had all seen Frau Linder’s great performance at the Green Horse, and to a man they revered her for it.

  “What have we here?” Frau Linder asked with a grin as she drew near. “A gathering of gentlemen of leisure?”

  “Nay,” Johann Gronow replied. “We are all workmen here, toiling under the lash for a pittance.”

  “I know better than that.” Marla laughed. “You’re all writers, every man of you.”

  “Alas, she knows us well,” Johannes Plavius said with drama, throwing the back of a hand to his brow.