1636- the Flight of the Nightingale

by David Carrico

  “In other words, he did shoddy work and now he is hiding behind Compenius to keep from having to fix it for nothing.”

  “That is Master Luder’s guess,” Heinrich contributed. “And he is not half happy about it, either.”

  “The good news, such as it is, is that we at least should not have to buy any more material for them,” Johann said. “The lead alloy in the pipes should be sufficient—they just need to be reformed.”

  “Why do all the up-timers flinch whenever we talk about using lead pipes?” Christoph asked.

  “That stupid game…Claw, or Flue, or something like that,” Johann said with a frown.

  “Clue. And one of the murder weapons in the game is a lead pipe,” Heinrich said with a grin. “I like it.”

  “You would,” Johann muttered. “But it is also because the up-time medical knowledge has proven that using lead to store water or food will taint the water and food and make people very ill, if not kill them. But we will just be pushing air through them, so there is no risk there. I already checked.”

  Heinrich snapped his fingers, and Johann and Christoph both looked at him. “That is why the tavern keeper at the Chain was arrested the other day. He had been adding sugar of lead to his rotgut wine, saying that it helped the flavor of the wine. From what I heard, it couldn’t have hurt it. Anyway, apparently some people died, and somebody got the new Polizei department involved. Word is that the up-timers are involved with that, and one of them figured out what happened pretty quick.”

  Johann’s eyes narrowed. “You stay away from that place. People who spend much time there usually get found floating facedown in The Big Ditch. I do not want to have to explain to Mama’s ghost how you came to die such a stupid death.”

  Christoph choked from where he was taking a pull at his mug and sprayed beer across the table, fortunately missing Johann. They all laughed a bit, then flagged the server down to bring a bit of rag or towel to wipe the table down.

  “You were saying?” Johann said with a look to Heinrich. “About the pipe fixes?”

  “Master Luder says he thinks one of them can be bent slightly to bring it into alignment.” Heinrich shook his head. “I’m not sure, myself, but he says it can be done. The other long pipe needs to be shorter, so he thinks that will be a cut and solder job.”

  Johann frowned. “As long as the pipes let the air pass, don’t leak, don’t burst, and fit the design, I don’t really care what he does to fix them. When does he think he can have them done?”

  “That will depend on when he can come take the measurements. For the bending, a day or so after that. For the cut and solder, a day or so longer. It’s not just the work, you understand. It’s also the testing for leaks. He said he’ll use water for that, so that will be an additional preparation he’ll have to make. If the worst happens and he has to start over, he can just melt them down and recreate them, but that would take a lot longer.”

  Johann shrugged. “As long as he gets it done. Tell him we really need them done and installed by…” he thought for a moment, then looked to Christoph, “…next Wednesday?”

  Christoph’s mouth quirked. He obviously wanted it sooner than that, but he acceded to Johann’s directive with a nod.

  “You are spending more time with us and not with Staci,” Christoph commented. “Are you not progressing in your courting?”

  Johann sighed. “Yes and no. I think we are continuing to draw closer together, but her dance company will be putting on a show next month as part of the July the Fourth Arts Festival, and she has been very busy with rehearsals. She does some of the dancing and much of the teaching and…what was the word…coaching, that was it. And the rehearsals mostly happen after school.” He shrugged. “So I only get to see her during those moments when she is not involved either with the school or the dancing…which are not very many, at the moment.”

  Christoph shook his head. “Sounds like Mama muttering about when Papa had to go off to do some special music.”

  “This dancing, it is that special?” Heinrich asked.

  Johann thought back to the show that was done in the previous year’s arts festival. “I guess it is. Certainly Frau Simpson and her backers in the Magdeburg Arts League think it is. They put up some pretty serious money last year to produce a show, and it was not one of the big shows that Staci talks about, but a number of smaller scenes that they strung together.”

  “So you saw that?” Heinrich again.

  Johann nodded. “I got to Magdeburg right before the festival, and just wandered around seeing things. The dance was done on an outdoor stage, so when I chanced upon it, I watched bits of it. It was…interesting.”

  “You say that like Mama said Frau Schmidt’s bread was ‘interesting,’” Heinrich said with a grin.

  “I did not know what I was watching,” Johann said, “and that was not why I had come to Magdeburg. I kept hearing that there was going to be some kind of big concert, so I kept looking for that.”

  “And you found it?” Christoph asked.

  “Indeed,” Johann responded. “I was able to act like I was a member of someone else’s party and slip into the palace. I stood in the back of the room and listened. It was…powerful.”

  “I bet,” Heinrich said, with a bit of longing. “I want to hear the orchestra perform.”

  “In a few weeks,” Johann said. “Patience.”

  “So when will you see Staci again?” Christoph said.

  “Her friend Casey is getting married in a few days, and she asked me to attend, partly so we could spend some time together. If nothing else, then.”

  Johann drained his mug and stood. “I am going back to the room and getting some sleep. I have a long day scheduled tomorrow.”

  June 7, 1635

  Johann stood with a glass of wine in his hand. He should have taken the beer instead, but Staci had wanted wine so he had done the same. He looked down at her where she stood beside him. Her wineglass wasn’t any emptier than his was.

  “The wine…” Johann muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  “Just drink it,” Staci responded. “It was the best Carl and Casey could get.”

  That, Johann could understand. Good wine was rare in the Germanies right now, although some of the winemaking areas were starting to produce again. That was hope for a few years from now, but at the moment good wines had to come from outside the region.

  “So are Casey and Carl going on the…honey…month?”

  “Honeymoon,” Staci said with a smile. “Honeymoon. And yes, they’re going to take a few days off and take the train back to Grantville and stay at the Higgins Hotel. They’ll catch up with family and friends, have some time by themselves, and then come back to Magdeburg.”

  “Can you afford for them to be gone from the dance rehearsals that long?”

  Staci quirked her mouth. “If you ask Mom, the answer is no, but she’s the biggest worrier on the planet. They both know their parts cold. What we’re mostly doing now is drilling the corps, the dancers that are the equivalent of a chorus. Those are younger girls, many of whom have not danced a big dance before, and most of the rest have only done the summer show last year or the Christmas show, so they don’t have a lot of experience.”

  “So this year, it is this…Schwein Lake?”

  Staci’s eyes got really big for a moment, then she busted out laughing. “Swine Lake! No, no, no…” and she laughed some more. “It’s Swan Lake! Tell me that you didn’t just make that up.”

  Johann shrugged. “Okay, I did not just make that up. Really, I did not. But I could not remember exactly the name, so I guessed.”

  “Oh, but that’s so funny. And that is something that cropped up as a joke before. P.D.Q. Bach may have done something with that…or was it the Muppets…”

  “P.D.Q. Bach?” That caught Johann’s attention. “Who is that? Or was that? Or whatever?”

  Now Staci’s eye widened again, and this time her jaw dropped.

  “You haven’t h
eard about P.D.Q. Bach yet? Oh, oh, oh…come on, we have to find Marla.”

  With that, she grabbed Johann by the arm and dragged him around the room until they finally ran down Marla and Franz, who were standing talking to Lady Beth and Jere Haygood. Johann noted with some small jealousy that Franz had taken a stein of beer. He thought about setting the wineglass down somewhere to lose it and going after his own beer, but wasn’t sure he could manage that discreetly.

  He did eye Marla, and noted that she did seem to have put on some weight, so the pregnancy was showing a bit. He hoped things were going well for her and Franz.

  “Hi, Lady Beth, Mr. Haygood,” Staci said. “Marla! Johann hasn’t heard about P.D.Q. Bach! How could you not have told him about him?”

  Wide grins appeared on everyone’s faces. Johann was now rather confused.

  “Oh, you poor deprived soul!” Lady Beth exclaimed. She turned toward Marla. “Marla, how could you?”

  Marla stood there, hand pressed to her mouth as if in horror, but Johann could see the corners of her lips curling up and the crinkles in the corners of her eyes as she struggled to suppress a laugh. A struggle that she lost after a couple of moments when Johann looked at her and raised his eyebrows. That in turn triggered laughter in the others, especially Franz Sylwester, so it was several more moments before the conversation could continue.

  “You mean Marcus never told you about him?” Marla finally responded.

  “No,” Johann said. “I think I would have remembered if he had.”

  “Oh, you’d have remembered it,” Marla said after another chuckle. “Trust me on this, you would have remembered.”

  There were firm head nods and sounds of agreement from the others in the group.

  “I’m sorry,” Marla said. “I should have done this a long time ago, but the thought never occurred to me for some reason. I guess you were never around when he came up before. Tell you what…you come over to the house tomorrow night, and I’ll introduce you to the man properly. Staci, you come, too.”

  Johann looked at Staci, and seeing her grin of anticipation, all he could do was nod in agreement.

  * * *

  “Wait…wait…” Johann gasped from where he was sitting on the floor in front of the sofa in Franz and Marla’s parlor. “Please…no more. I am in pain.”

  He had been laughing for most of the last couple of hours as Marla had played selection after selection from the P.D.Q. Bach albums. Toward the end, he had slid off the front of the couch as The Art of the Ground Round, S. 1.19/lb. had played, wrapping his arms around his ribs and howling. “My Bonnie Lass She Smelleth” from The Triumph of Thusnelda was the pièce de résistance that did him in, forcing him to stuff the corner of a pillow in his mouth to muffle his laughter.

  “Oh…oh…” Johann said as his breathing began to slow down. “That man is a genius.”

  “Most up-time musicians thought so as well,” Marla said with a big grin on her face. “I only have a few of his albums, but Marcus has them all back in Grantville—or everything that had been done before the Ring of Fire, anyway—and he promised me he was going to leave them to me in his will. One of the things I really regret about the Ring falling is we have missed any new albums that might have been produced.” She took the CD out of her boom box and put it back in its case. “I haven’t been able to get Marcus to put any of this stuff on the priority publication list for the Grantville Music Trust yet.”

  “Oh, that must happen,” Johann said. “I can tell I did not understand a lot of the humor because I do not understand enough about specific up-time music pieces or up-time English idiom yet, but still, from what I did understand, it was so funny. This has got to be published. And that supposed biography of P.D.Q. Bach has got to be published again. Musicians all over Europe will take this up. Patrons will never understand this, but musicians will petition to have Herr Peter Schickele in his persona of P.D.Q. Bach made a saint, even if he never lived or never lives in our time.

  “Perhaps we can work together,” Johann ended.

  “That might work,” Marla exclaimed. “You take one arm and I’ll take the other, and we’ll both twist.”

  Johann held his hands up together and twisted them in opposite directions, exchanging a grin with Marla.

  Staci slid off the front of the sofa where she’d been sitting to settle alongside Johann. Before he really realized what he was doing, he’d placed his arm around her shoulders. She nestled in beside him. That caused his eyes to widen a bit and his breath to quicken for a moment.

  Johann didn’t move for the rest of the evening until it was time to leave.

  July 1, 1635

  “The wind-chest tests are complete,” Christoph said. “The new fan works fine after Fräulein Matowski had the fan blades reworked and the seals around the fan channel reinforced.”

  Fräulein Matowski? Staci? Johann thought. Then a light dawned. “Oh, you mean Fräulein Melanie.”

  “Uh-huh. It is a bit confusing, having two of them around.”

  “Right,” Johann said. “I assume the carpenters have resumed work on the cabinet case for the keyboards and for the pipe chambers.”

  “Yes,” Christoph said. “But Old Georg says they are going to need to know the measurements for the keyboard and pedal assemblies soon.”

  Johann made a note. “Right. That friend of Franz Sylwester’s, Friederich Braun, has come up from Grantville to work those for us. He had roughed them in in the Bledsoe and Riebeck workshops, and then accompanied them to Magdeburg. He got here a couple of days ago, and has been waiting for the opportunity to start putting them in the case. I will have him come in tomorrow so he can get with you and Georg and Georg.”

  He turned to Heinrich. “Pipe production?”

  “As of today,” the youngest Bach said, “one hundred and forty-seven pipes completed, thirty-six more ready for tuning, and nineteen roughed in.”

  “And Master Luder is still working the lowest-register pipes?”

  Heinrich nodded. “He understands that getting them done first will speed things up later as he moves to the midrange and treble pipes. He will be able to get more pipes out of a single sheet of tin, and he’s gotten very good at bending the tin and sealing the edges. To the point where he is about to let the other whitesmith, Müller, out of their agreement. He says that he spends so much time going over Müller’s work and either fixing it or arguing with him about it that he can pretty much do the work himself as fast or faster. He also muttered something about it was obvious why Compenius hadn’t hired Müller for his work.”

  “Any word on how the Compenius project is going?” Johann asked.

  “I have not heard anything,” Christoph replied.

  “Someone told Master Luder that they have finished clearing out and rebuilding the pipe loft, and the whitesmiths have started making pipes, but nothing more than that.”

  “We still have not had that much conflict with him,” Johann mused. “I am glad about that, but also nervous.” He thought about it for a few moments longer, then shrugged. “Nothing says we have to get in each other’s way. We will see.”

  He placed his pencil in its loop in his notebook and closed it. “You two are on your own tonight. There will be a small performance at the Duchess Elisabeth Sofie Secondary School for Girls tonight, involving Frau Marla and a few of her friends in something for the Arts League and the school. I suspect they are trying to raise money and using Frau Marla’s cachet to do it.”

  “And we poor humble Bachs are not on the invitation list,” Christoph said with a mock frown. “Imagine that.”

  “So how are you getting in?” Heinrich asked his oldest brother.

  “Staci is part of the performance group and asked me to come along.”

  “It is always who you know,” Christoph said with a smirk.

  Johann looked at the two of them. “So stay out of trouble, all right?”

  His brothers looked at each other, grinned, and looked back at him. He shook his
head.

  * * *

  There was light applause as Marla led her group of performers into the great room of the townhouse. Of course, as great rooms go, it wasn’t huge, but there were easily twenty Adel and patricians seated in a crescent around a piano, leaving some space.

  There were more people than that in the room, of course. There was one steward at a table with several bottles of wine and other comestibles, and there was a table laden with food in what the up-timers called “buffet style,” with servants to serve the food and even deliver full plates as needed.

  Marla and her friends were obviously experienced at this kind of affair, Johann noted. They gathered around the piano, Marla standing at the fore. She had her hands clasped before her.

  “Good evening,” Marla began. “Thank you for coming tonight. We will be presenting a short program of up-timer music of the sorts that were called ‘popular’ prior to the Ring of Fire. We hope that you will find it enjoyable. For some of these songs, this will be the first time we have done them in Magdeburg.”

  And with that, she settled on the seat at the piano, placed her hands on the keys, and the music began.

  Johann didn’t recall a lot about the evening after it was done, other than the sheer mastery of the music as the musicians moved from song to song. A few of them stuck with him: Staci singing “Norwegian Wood,” Marla singing “Big Yellow Taxi,” Isaac and Rudolf doing a duet on “Mommas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” and others.

  In the middle of the evening, Marla stood up and moved around before the piano, where she was joined by Staci, Isaac, and Rudolf.

  “And as a real change of pace, just so you’ll know that there were some really weird guys out there, here’s a bit of musical humor.” She looked directly at Johann where he stood in the back of the room and gave a quick grin. For a moment he was apprehensive, uncertain as to what was going to happen. Marla hummed a pitch, gathered the eyes of the other three, and gave a nod.