Grantville Gazette, Volume 67

by Bjorn Hasseler

  “How do you mean?” Big Georg asked.

  “Well, he knows he’s responsible for what is going on, and he wants to do something to make sure everything goes right, but he does not know what to do and is totally dependent on someone else who does not want or need his help to get it done.”

  The two Georgs broke out into raucous laughter, and Johann could feel his lips curling up, however reluctantly. “Not being married, I cannot say from my own experience if you have the right of it, Georg,” he replied.

  “Not married, are you?” Big Georg asked.

  “Not yet. There was a girl in Erfurt, but…” Johann shrugged.

  “You came to Magdeburg, and suddenly Erfurt does not look so grand, eh?”

  Johann shrugged again, hearing muffled snorts from Christoph and Heinrich.

  “Got your eye on a woman here?”

  A vision of Staci’s face crossed his mind. “Perhaps.”

  “I knew it.” Old Georg crawled out of the wind chest. “Side walls are done. Cap the brazier and set the pot to cool, Georg. We’ll pick up from there in the morning.” He straightened his slight frame and twisted his back, generating several loud pops. “Oog, I am getting too old to be crouched like that all day.” The older man took his hands, grasped his head and jerked it to each side, generating more pops.

  “You knew what?” his partner demanded.

  “He is looking for a city girl, a bürgemeister's daughter, or maybe a younger daughter of one of the Niederadel. Or, even better—” Old Georg leered at Johann. “—he wants one of those uppity up-timer women. Am I right?”

  Johann said nothing, just smiled.

  “Hah! I thought so.” Old Georg slapped his knee. “You just be careful, Master Bach. Them up-timers can be a tricksy lot at times. Everyone knows that. You think things through with care before you tie yourself down with one of them.”

  Johann picked his jacket up as the two Georgs lifted their tool chest to take it to the locked storage area. “I will take your advice to heart, Georg.”

  “You do that,” the older man called over his shoulder as they maneuvered out the door.

  Johann looked around. Solid progress being made at last. It had taken longer than he had hoped for the wind chamber to be built, but now that it was up and roofed the carpenters were making good speed. He bent over and peered into the wind chest. Another day, maybe, to finish lining the chest with paper, unless they decided there needed to be two layers. Two or three days past that to make sure the glue was cured, then the varnish would be applied. Once that dried, he could rest assured that there would be no air leaks from the inside of the chest.

  He slung his jacket over his shoulder and walked through the shell of the building, his brothers following, feet following the safe paths with unconscious thought as he mused. An uppity up-timer woman, huh? Is that what he wanted? Hazel eyes above an impish grin floated before him, sparking a smile of his own. Yes, if he was going to be honest, that was what he wanted.

  "An up-time woman?" Heinrich asked. "When do we get to meet her?"

  Johann heard the glee in his brother's voice, and groaned inside. He had really hoped to keep Staci a secret for a bit longer, but it looked like he'd let his own secret slip.

  "Today is…" Johann began, then paused.

  "Wednesday," Christoph said with a grin. "What of it?"

  "I may be able to introduce you tonight, then," Johann said.

  "What's her name?" Heinrich insisted.

  "Later. Let's go see the whitesmith." And with that, Johann headed back out of the construction site and onto the Gustavstrasse.

  Half an hour later, the three Bachs were standing against the back wall of Master Philip Luder's forge space, watching the master and his assistant work. The two men transferred a crucible full of molten tin from the forge to the pouring table with great care. There was no doubt in his mind that the crucible and its carrying rods were weighty, and that the molten ore contained within the crucible added to the load. But there was also no doubt in his mind that the reason for their slow steps and gentle handling had nothing to do with the weight. No, he could see the heat waves above the mouth of the crucible, making wavy lines through which he could not see with clarity. The thought of what that molten metal could do if it spilled or splashed on a man’s flesh caused his groin to shrivel and his stomach to attempt to climb up his throat. Despite the fact that he was well away from them, he still slid down the wall another step or two, pushing Christoph and Heinrich along as he did so.

  The whitesmith and his journeyman came to the pouring table and positioned themselves with care at the head of it. They lifted the crucible so that the lip of it rested on the edge of the trough mounted on top of the table rim.

  “Gently, gently,” Master Luder breathed. “On the count of three… One, two, three, pour.”

  They tilted the crucible until the molten silvery-gray tin slowly poured out in a steady wave into the trough. Higher and higher the crucible tilted, until the pour slowed and the last few drops of it fell into the trough, making ripples in the molten metal.

  “Quickly now,” the master snapped. They set the crucible down on the stone floor with alacrity, then took positions on each side of the trough. “Ready?”

  “Jah.” The journeyman was focused on the trough, having grasped a handle on his side of it with both his gloved hands.

  “Again on three. One, two, three, pull.”

  Johann saw Master Luder trip a latch as he said “Pull,” and the molten tin sluiced out the bottom of the trough as they pulled it on the raised rim down the length of the table. The last drops spilled out as they reached the end of the table.

  The two smiths straightened and took off their heavy leather gloves. Master Luder walked the length of the table, peering at the shining sheet of tin. At the head of the table, he turned to Johann.

  “It is a good pour,” he declared, reaching up to take off his scarred leather apron. “That is the first of the English tin. I had to try it myself to see how it would melt and pour. Very few impurities in it, and I was able to skim most of them right off the top. So, somewhat cleaner than the locally produced tin, but also somewhat more expensive. I will do a pour of the local tin and compare them, then you and I will talk. The English tin is more costly, of course, and if there is little benefit to the cost increase, you may need to rethink your requirement. Either way, I will likely contract with other whitesmiths to make the sheet tin like this, and I will concentrate on making the pipes for you.”

  “Very good,” Johann said. He stepped closer to the table and gazed at the shimmering metal through the heat waves. “I trust that we will start seeing pipes soon.”

  Master Luder shrugged. “As soon as this cools and I can start working it. First pipes in a week, first tunable pipes the week after that.”

  Johann calculated in his mind. “That will do for a start. But you may have to work with other smiths to make the pipes as well. Three thousand pipes is a lot for you and your workers to make by yourselves.”

  Master Luder shrugged again. “We will cross that ford when we come to it.”

  Johann said nothing, but observed to himself that the crossing of that ford would not be far off—not if he had anything to say about it—and he did. Still, this was a good beginning. “My thanks, Master Philip. Shall we go to The Green Horse and celebrate this auspicious beginning?”

  “Nah,” the whitesmith replied with a smile. “I have much to do yet before this day’s light is done.” He held up a hand with a raised index finger. “However, the day that you pass the first completed pipe, then we will all go to The Green Horse!” He waved his hand broadly to include both his journeyman and the two younger Bach brothers. The journeyman nodded his head with a vigor that matched Heinrich's echoing nod.

  “As you will,” Johann replied with an answering smile. “Until then.”

  Johann was still smiling when he stepped out into the evening light. He had carried his jacket from the construct
ion site, and had left it off in the warmth of the forge. Now, for all that it had been a sunny spring day earlier, clouds were covering the sun now and the air outside was cool, so he shook the jacket out to put it on, shrugging his shoulders to get it to settle.

  "Herr Bach!" someone called out. "Johann!"

  Johann looked around to see Marla Linder waving at him from where she stood with her husband, Franz Sylwester. He started to cross the street to where she was, only to have Christoph grab his collar and yank him back just as a large pair of horses moved into the space he'd been about to step into, pulling a rather large and laden wagon behind them.

  The wagon driver looked down at him. "You…" The rest of the driver's monologue established a masterful command of profanity, scatology, and blasphemy as he assessed Johann's intelligence, likelihood of siring children, legitimacy, general maleness, and prospects of making any significant contributions to the German people or to the human race in general, all in a few short pithy sentences that trailed away as the wagon trundled on.

  "You might want to watch where you're about to step," Christoph said, voice slightly strained. Johann wasn't sure if that was from concern at almost seeing his elder brother stepped on or run over, or from suppressed laughter at the same cause.

  Johann looked to his younger brother, where he observed widened eyes and lips moving soundlessly as he stared after the wagon. He was undoubtedly trying to memorize parts of what he'd heard. Johann shook his head.

  "Come on." After a moment, Johann started forward again, this time carefully looking both ways. He suspected he would hear about this again.

  Marla grinned at Johann as he and his brothers joined her and Franz on their side of the street. "Got to watch where you're going, man."

  "Indeed," Johann admitted with a bit of a sour grin of his own. Christoph nudged him. "Ah, these are my brothers, Christoph and Heinrich." They each nodded as their names were called. "These are Franz Sylwester, dirigent of the Magdeburg Symphony Orchestra, and Marla Linder, leading treble singer of Magdeburg, superb musician and master of the piano, and one of the leading lights of Magdeburg's music establishment."

  The two young men bowed, receiving nods in reply from Marla and Franz.

  "Nice to meet you, boys," Marla said. She looked at Johann with another grin. "You going to put them to work?"

  "They're going to help with the organ project, yes."

  "Good. I suspect you're going to need the help."

  Johann shrugged.

  "We're going to be at the Green Horse tonight," Marla continued. "You planning on being there? Staci said she was going to come." Marla's grin reappeared, this time with an edge of humor to it.

  "Ah, yes," Johann said, not missing the glances his brothers gave each other.

  "Good. We'll see you then." Marla slipped her hand around Franz's arm. "Meanwhile, we've got to run to Zopff and Sons printers and get some more staff paper. See you tonight. And nice to meet you, Christoph, Heinrich."

  And with that, the two of them turned and moved off.

  "Is she the one?" Heinrich asked.

  "No," Johann said in a quelling tone.

  "She is that good a musician?" Christoph asked, watching them leave.

  "Frau Marla, as she insists everyone call her, may be the best musician in the city," Johann responded. "And Herr Franz is not far behind her."

  "Up-timer, I assume from her accent," Heinrich said. Johann just nodded in response. "He said nothing. Is he up-timer as well? Does he hide behind her?"

  That jarred a laugh out of Johann. "By no means. Franz is one of us. He is no weakling. He is as strong-willed as she—he had to be, to win her—but he is somewhat quieter, so that he sometimes seems to be the shadow to her sunshine. Let him stand at the head of the orchestra, though, and you will see him in all his strength."

  "Dirigent," Christoph mused.

  "We will talk about that later," Johann said.

  "Staci," Heinrich murmured with an evil grin.

  Johann sighed. "Fräulein Anastasia Matowski," he said reluctantly.

  "I thought you said she was an up-timer. Is she Polish?" Christoph wrinkled his forehead. "Russian?"

  "Up-timer," Johann said, gritting his teeth. "And the up-timers use Fräulein as a common form of address for any unmarried woman, so do not be thinking she's a child of rank or anything."

  "So is she a musician, too?" Heinrich asked, his grin broadening.

  "No, not like Frau Marla. She's a teacher. And that's all I'm going to say for now. Now come on, we need to go talk to Herr Jere Haygood."

  ****

  About the Faces on the Cutting Room Floor, Number Five: The Word According to Whom? by Charles E. Gannon

  The longest running battle in the entirety of 1635: The Papal Stakes does not involve guns or horses or ships, but holy writ. Arguably, the theological fate of Roman Catholicism—and consequently, the prospects for near-term cessation of internecine religious hostilities among the Judeo-Christian peoples of the world—rest with the outcome of the struggle between the tolerance-espousing tenets of the up-time documents known as Vatican II and the harsh Borgia-supported absolutism of the illegally usurped Papacy.

  The respective spokesmen of these contending writs and cultural views are the up-timer Father Mazzare (now Cardinal-Protector of the USE) and Father Luke Wadding, a historical down-time Franciscan conservative who was an architect of the papal doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and yet also an innovative and often iconoclastic thinker.

  The struggle, carried out in the upper floor of a humble abandoned farm villa in the remote mountain thorp of Molino, ranged between issues of the provenance of Vatican II (i.e., is it truly a papal document from the future or an infernal deceit?) and the extent of toleration that is advisable and supportable in the epoch of the Thirty Years War. With legitimate but renegade Pope Urban VIII looking on, Jesuit Father-General Vitelleschi (the Black Pope) oversees the often heated and desperate debate, many details of which had to be excised—but are shared here.

  Mazzare spends much time defending against the suggestion that the appearance—and particular features of Grantville—might have all been infernal constructs. Of course, actual argumentation would have left no detail unexamined, no supporting perspective unpresented—but this is yet another illustration of how novels necessarily part ways with reality: the semblance of completeness, and the impression of definitude, are sufficient, even if they are not actual “simulations” of what would have been an interminable exegetical debate. One such excised line of argument was:

  Mazzare turned a desultory wrist. “And if you should continue to argue that Grantville’s almost innumerable violations of the boundaries of contemporary or ‘down-time’ knowledge all arise as creations of Satan’s knowledge and power—but which he has only now decided to show--I must then ask: what has become of the Church’s long-standing doctrine that the age of worldly miracles has passed? For that, too, must be repealed if Grantville’s presence is to be attributed to a Satanic intrusion. Which would of course imply that either Satan has become desperate, or that God has become weak and something less than a Supreme Deity.”

  Vitelleschi looked down his long, fine nose. “Those are both provocative comments that not only warrant, but demand, explanation, Cardinal Mazzare.”

  Who nodded. “Of course. One possibility is that the Church’s august exegetes were mistaken, and that the age of worldly miracles is not past. However, this leaves Satan’s tardy exploitation of these powers inexplicable, except to assert that God has heretofore restrained them. But then why would He restrain them no longer? Perhaps He has grown so weak or inattentive that Satan was able to violate that decree?”

  The stiffened spines among the clerics demonstrated just how unpopular that hypothesis was.

  “Of course,” continued Mazzare, “such a proposition is absurd. The almost equally absurd alternative is that, although the age of miracles was not over, Satan has not conceived of such stratagems until this
moment. With nothing but an eternity of torment to focus on in lieu of relentless, vengeful plotting, it is preposterous to impute such titanic oversight to a being known for his cunning and determined malignity.”

  Although Mazzare seemed to have won that round regarding the basic provenance of Grantville’s appearance and existence as non-demonic, the status of up-time popes and papal doctrines was a far more closely-contended point, as exemplified by the scene in which Luke Wadding advanced this argument:

  Wadding spread his hands in a gesture of appeal. “However, there may be another explanation behind the profound, even radical changes, articulated by Vatican II. It is possible that God’s reason for entrusting these ordinances to the up-time Church was not because it was more mature, but because its situation had become so desperate and grave that it required just such an inspiration. It may have been a necessary catalyst for the faithful to chart a new course for the world, a world that seemed determined to propel itself over the brimstone lip into fiery oblivion. And all for what? For one nation or another to prevail in a petty squabble to possess a globe which, when that final war was concluded, no man could live in, and no man would want mastery over?

  “More provocatively, and sadly, we cannot even know if, in that future, God continued to favor their Church. I find it interesting that John XXIII claimed he ‘never speaks infallibly.’ Was this the quip of a pope who embraced a life of humility, or was it in fact a frank and honest statement: did he know that God had gone silent, had forsaken the humans of the up-time world, just as they had supplanted faith in him with confidence in science and machinery?”

  “Are you saying that these up-time popes were not popes at all, that the Church was forsaken by God?” Vitelleschi’s eyes were sharp.

  Wadding raised his hands in the gesture of the Reasonable Man. “I know I tread at the edge of blasphemy, Father-General, for Christ promised us that he would not forsake us. And yet it was also he who spoke of how it was easier for humans to pass through the eye of a needle than it was for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And from every depiction of the up-time world, wealth and mammon reigned as supreme there as sodomy and blasphemy did in Sodom and Gomorrah.”