It was an occasional source of amusement to Johann that his namesake’s music had survived and come back through the Ring of Fire. It was more often a source of awe, and of wondering at just what God had wrought. This piece, the so-called “Little” Fugue in G Minor, was one of his favorites of all the Bach works that had come back; not because it was grand and glorious, but because it almost felt like laughter to him. He could see in his mind’s eye the young man, no older than Christoph was now, smiling and chuckling and chortling as he wrote the notes, as he tried the phrases, as he developed the motif, and that humor came through to him. He’d never understood why so many up-timer musicians thought that minor keys were “sad.” Nothing could be further from the truth, he thought.
The opening phrases passed under Johann’s fingers on the clavier keys, with his feet moving on the floor when the pedal line came in, which he hummed to give himself the sense of tone, since of course the clavier could not.
He’d wanted to practice at St. Ulrich’s Church. The church and its small organ had managed to survive the 1631 Sack partially intact, which was more than could be said for much of the town.
The cathedral had taken some damage and much vandalism. St. Katherine’s, St. Nikolai’s, and St. Johann’s churches had all been so severely damaged in the great fire that they were basically destroyed. The efforts of the occupying troops to find anything of value had completed that destruction. St. Sebastian’s Church was severely damaged, but repairs were progressing on it. St. Ulrich’s, Heilig-Geist, and St. Peter’s churches were damaged to some extent, but were usable and had received early repairs. Only little St. Jacob’s Church, in the poorest district of the Altstadt, had escaped damage from the Sack, the resulting fire, and the subsequent vandalism, primarily because it was upwind from the source of the fire and was the poorest church and had little the occupying troops wanted.
St. Ulrich’s, being located in one of the richest quarters of the city, had taken damage, but had also been supported by the wealthy families who had returned to the city after Gustavus Adolphus had liberated it from Tilly and Pappenheim’s occupation troops. Consequently, it had been one of the earliest to be repaired, since its congregation, led by its returning pastor, Gilbert de Spaignart, was willing to put up the funds to have the repairs done.
But as with everywhere Johann had served, the needs of the church or of the congregation took precedence over his need to practice on the organ, and today it chanced that there was a wedding occurring. The wedding was occupying the nave during most of the block of time he had to practice, which meant that the organ, even though it wasn’t in use for the wedding, was not available to him. So he was back at the Royal Academy of Music in one of the side rooms, practicing on a small clavier.
Johann could have found a piano, possibly. The academy now had at least four of them—maybe five, if he remembered rumor correctly, with some coming from Bledsoe and Riebeck but the latest from the studio of Girolamo Zenti—but for what he was doing, a piano didn’t have the right touch. A clavier gave more like the effect of an organ, at least for the purpose of practicing. So he settled for the first clavier he could find.
He finished his first run-through. It wasn’t as smooth as it should have been, so he went back to several places in the music and played those sections again, usually where there were transitions or where there was a new entry of the theme. After several repeats, the passages felt smoother, and his hands seemed to have the patterns down.
Again, from the beginning this time. The lilt and the bounce of the fugue just lifted his spirits, almost as if dancing.
And at that point Johann’s fingers stumbled and he totally lost the flow and feel of the fugue. His hands froze. He hunched forward, almost as if he had been struck. And his mind flashed back to the events that had occurred over a month ago.
Johann saw again Staci strip away her long skirt and stand revealed in the close-fitting hose that had left her looking as if her legs were painted black, with no skirt covering her lower torso, simply more form-fitting clothing that would have been indecent as underthings to most of the women Johann had known in his life.
She stood there like that, before a room half-filled with men, and then proceeded to dance, energetically, feet flashing, tap sounds happening as her shoes contacted the metal plate she was standing on, kicking her legs up at moments.
It had shocked Johann. Shocked him deeply, truth to tell, and he hadn’t responded well. He had heard that the up-timer women were more liberal in their dress than most down-timers, but he thought he had seen the limits of that with the short skirts that were sometimes worn in Magdeburg. The occasional tight-fitting top had its down-time equivalents, certainly enough. No, it was the short skirts and tight-fitting trousers that Johann had mostly found somewhat inappropriate. But even that he had accepted as somewhat in the norm of things.
But what Staci had worn that night…it had shocked him. There was no other word for it. And for someone like Johann, someone who was a thinker and a planner and who liked to have everything in life fitting into its proper place in the harmony of life, that shock had stripped away all his control, all his knowledge, all his assurance, and left his bare emotions exposed so raw—so almost-bleeding—that for the first time in a long time he had simply reacted without thought. He had spoken from his shock, his hurt, his confusion, his bewilderment; and because he did so, he struck out to cause hurt to match his own.
For perhaps the first time since that night, Johann admitted that to himself. That he had struck to hurt as a way to assuage the hurt he was feeling.
He remembered the expression on Staci’s face when he savaged her—the stark desolation, the slow tears, the dark pain he saw in her eyes in the combined lamplight and moonlight. And today…today for the first time Johann admitted to himself that he had been wrong to do so…that he had, in fact, done evil.
Johann leaned forward, placing his elbows carelessly on the clavier keyboard and creating a jangle of sound. He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. The pain that he felt as he did so was welcome, because for that bare moment it gave him something else to feel, something else to focus on, something that wasn’t the result of a really bad choice on his part.
Johann ground his teeth so hard that he was surprised that some of them didn’t just shatter or crack. That produced another ache, another physical feeling that he embraced. Yet as with the first pains, nothing could blot out the deeper ache, the deeper shame.
The need was there to make amends, if for no other reason than what Scripture required of him. Matthew chapter seven verses 2, 3 and 12 alone put him on notice of what God expected of him. But how? That was the operative question now. And that needed some thought. Much thought. Because the last thing in the world Johann wanted to do now was compound the evil he had already created. So he would move slowly, he thought. But he would move. He took his hands from his eyes and gave a definite nod.
To mark that decision, he set aside the music for the “Little” Fugue in G Minor, and set his mind on the first piece of Johann Sebastian’s music that he had learned—the first piece he had heard—the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. He placed his fingers on the keys, and after a moment, began.
And as always, once he was into it, he became swept up in the riverlike flood of the music, feet tromping on the floor as he hummed the pedal lines. It flowed, it danced—and this time the thought didn’t break his performance, but buoyed it up, instead—it rushed in a spate, and for not the first time in playing the music of his almost-descendant, Johann experienced a moment of time out of time where he wondered at the Escherness of God at allowing Johann to know and play the music of a descendant who would never be, the Escherness of God at allowing that music to be available to Johann, the Escherness of God at allowing that beauty to not be lost with the Ring of Fire, but to be brought back.
“Soli Deo Gloria,” Johann whispered as he played the final chords.
* * *
“All right, y’al
l,” Brendan Murphy said as the laughs started to die down. “Here’s one you haven’t heard yet. You all know that the army uses a whole bunch of mules, right? In moving all that army stuff from one place to another, I mean, right?”
Nods from all around the Green Horse common room, and grins all over the place in anticipation of what his joke would be.
“So, there was this one army mule named Hermann, right? Well, Hermann died…”
Brendan waited, and sure enough he got an “Awww,” from the table where his wife Catrina was sitting with Marla and Staci and Melanie and Casey. It was almost like homecoming week. He loved it when there were up-timers in the audience, because they always knew when to laugh.
“Yeah, Hermann died, and he’d been such a great mule for the army that they actually put up a memorial for him.” That got snorts from some of the men around the room who obviously had experience with the down-time armies. “No, seriously, it was engraved and everything. Here’s how it read:
“In memory of Hermann, who in his lifetime kicked…” Brendan started ticking the list off on his fingers, “one general, four colonels, two majors, ten captains, twelve lieutenants, forty-four sergeants, five hundred thirty-nine privates and corporals, and one bomb.”
Brendan ended the joke with a straight face, and it took a moment for the punch line to sink in. When it did, there was a groan from the girls’ table and a shout of laughter from almost everyone else in the room.
Almost everyone else in the room wasn’t everyone, though, and Brendan took a swig of ale while the audience laughed at the joke, glowering over the rim of his mug at the old farmer sitting at the table right before him. The man had obviously brought a cart or wagon full of something to Magdeburg for the local markets, and had stopped in at the Green Horse for something to eat, or, more likely, something to drink. And he’d sat there like a frog on a log all through Brendan’s new routine. Everyone else was laughing, but this guy could be a statue, for all Brendan could tell.
All right then, time to pull out all the stops.
“So,” Brendan began again as the laughter started to die down, “General Mike Stearns was riding along at the front of the Third Division one day. He looks over to his left, and he sees a herd of pigs, with an old swineherd leaning on a staff watching them. Then he sees something remarkable; something so unusual he can’t believe his eyes. He throws up his hand and brings the whole column to a halt. ‘Colonel Higgins, do you see what I see?’ he says to Jeff Higgins.
“‘Well, General, if you see a pig with a wooden leg, then yes, I do.’
“‘I thought so,’ the general said. ‘Come on, I’ve got to see what this is all about.’
“So the general and the colonel rode over to the swineherd. ‘Good afternoon, old-timer,’ General Stearns said. ‘What’s the story with the pig with the wooden leg?’
“‘Oh, Herr General, sir, that’s the finest pig in the world, the greatest, smartest, bravest pig that ever was or ever will be,’ the swineherd replied.
“‘Friend, I don’t want to buy the pig,’ General Stearns said back to him, ‘I just want to know about the wooden leg.’
“‘Well, Herr General,’ the old man said, leaning on his staff, ‘you see, that there pig really is special. One day some bandits came upon me and the herd out in the trees somewhere over there, and started to steal the pigs. They drew their knives, and came after me, too, and I was really afeared for my life. But that pig, that one there with the wooden leg, why he started to snorting and bellowing and pawing the ground and roaring and gnashing his teeth, and after he did all that, he rose up on his hind legs, and then he leapt forward and started biting and slashing at the bandits, until they all ran away bleeding and crying for their mothers. Then he trotted back and helped me up, and picked up my staff and handed it to me with his mouth.
“‘Yep,’ the old swineherd said, nodding at the pig with the wooden leg, ‘he saved me and the rest of the herd from murder and slaughter.’
“‘Old-timer,’ General Stearns said, ‘he sounds like a very fine pig indeed, a veritable Hercules among pigs. But why does he have a wooden leg?’ The general was getting a little put out with the old man by this point.
“‘Well, Herr General, sir,’ the old swineherd said…”
Brendan paused for effect, watching the farmer, timing his punch line. Now, he thought.
“‘…you don’t eat a pig like that all at once.’”
Gotcha, Brendan thought with a grin as the farmer spewed ale from his nose and mouth and the room erupted in laughter as much because of the farmer’s spew as for the joke itself.
“That’s it for tonight,” Brendan said, waving a hand over his head. “I’ll be back next week. Tell your friends.”
And with that he stepped down off of the little platform that was at one end of the Green Horse’s common room. The tavern keeper had put that in about the third week after Marla and her friends had started performing there back in late 1633, and it had seen a lot of use since then.
Brendan walked over to where his wife was sitting with the other up-timers, pulled up a free chair and turned it around, then straddled it and sat down—carefully, because he was a large guy—and laid his arms across the top of the chair back. “Hi, y’all,” he said. “Did you come down to see me shine, or was this just a serious drinking night?”
That got chuckles all around, because none of the women at that table did much drinking other than a mug of beer or a glass of wine at meals, and he knew it.
“Good job tonight, Brendan,” Marla said. “You’re getting pretty good at the stand-up stuff. I really liked those last two jokes.”
“I’ll take praise from you, Marla,” Brendan said with a grin. “And yeah, it’s kind of funny doing stand-up, and kind of odd as well. The down-timers have stuff kind of like stand-up, but it’s usually combined with other stuff at the same time, like jugglers or tumblers or in between songs from a minstrel or singer. Just having someone standing up and telling jokes for an hour or so is unusual to them, and it’s taken a while to get people used to it. But Ernst,” he nodded at the owner of the Green Horse who was doing duty behind the bar tonight, “was good about giving me time to build a following. And now it’s starting to take off.”
“You still working for the transportation department?” Casey asked.
“Yeah, for a little while longer at least,” Brendan said, “at least as long as the Army will keep me there. We’re expecting,” he nodded to where Catrina sat with a hand on a very pregnant belly, “so we need a little more reliable income than I’m likely to make just doing the stand-up.”
“Must be something in the water,” Marla said putting a hand on her abdomen where her own pregnancy bump was beginning to show.
“Or the wine,” Brendan said with a grin.
* * *
Johann watched from where he had been leaning against the wall beside the door of the Green Horse. He’d been there for close to half an hour, watching Brendan’s routine…and watching Staci as well. He hadn’t planned on seeing Staci tonight. It’s just that the tavern had become a common stop for him on the way home on those nights when he knew that Frau Marla and her friends were not performing there. He didn’t have the courage to face her any more than he did Staci, so he had been avoiding the tavern on those nights. Just his luck they’d both be here tonight.
His first impulse when he saw them there, all of the up-timer women in a group, had been to leave. Almost Johann did, but he was drawn into the room despite himself. He stood there in the back, looking at the back of Staci’s head, occasionally getting a glimpse of her full or partial profile when she turned to speak to someone else. A couple of times Johann saw the corner of Staci’s lip curled up a bit, but even from the side her face appeared a bit drawn, and he could tell from the set of her shoulders that she was tired…perhaps weary, even.
When Brendan brought his act to a close and stepped down off the stage, Johann took one last look at Staci, just as she s
tarted to look behind her. He sharply turned away and pushed his way out the door.
Outside, night was well fallen, and even for August the air was a bit cool. That fit Johann’s frame of mind just fine, for in his heart he felt it was winter.
* * *
Staci turned back around with a quizzical expression on her face.
“What?” her sister Melanie asked.
“I thought I saw Johann in the back of the room,” she replied.
Marla stiffened and jerked around to check. “I don’t see him now,” she said after a moment. “And he’d better not be anywhere I can lay eyes on him.”
“You mean that Bach fellow?” Brendan asked. At the volley of nods from the women, he said, “Yeah, he was in the back. He stepped in the door, maybe a half hour or so ago, almost left, but hung around until just a few seconds ago.” He caught a frown from all of them, and held up his hands. “He didn’t act like a stalker, okay? He just stood back there listening to the jokes for a while, then left without talking to anyone or doing anything.”
Staci drew her feet up on the front of her chair seat, wrapped her arms around her knees, and leaned her forehead against them. Marla and Casey looked at each other over her, and Casey shook her head.
September 1635
Christoph pulled Heinrich to one side in the echoing space that would be the main performance auditorium of the opera house. Johann was down by the organ performance console talking to the two Georgs and to Friederich Braun. They looked to be set for a long discussion, but Christoph kept an eye on them anyway, not wanting Johann to get in the middle of what he was about to say.
“I got a little more out of Fräulein Melanie about what happened between Johann and Fräulein Staci.”
Heinrich’s eyes cut toward Johann as he leaned closer. “And?”
“Apparently our esteemed eldest brother was somewhat offended by both a dance costume Fräulein Staci wore and the manner in which she performed the dance. And when she asked him for his opinion, he pushed all his ire off on her and then had the rank foolishness to call her a hypocrite.”
1636- the Flight of the Nightingale Page 28