FREE STORIES 2012(63)

Larry shrugged. “Why should one remain in the path of war when it approaches?”

Schoenfeld’s one good eye stabbed at him. “To support one’s family. Which I did not. And thanks to that, my father is dead of plague.”

Thomas blinked: so, the late Burgermeister Schoenfeld and the artist’s father are one and the same. It was not beyond possibility that there could be two such men of the same name, and same generation, who would have died of the plague in Biberach. But it was pretty unlikely, and besides, a Burgermeister would have the wealth and authority to send a talented son—particularly a son who was blind in one eye—off to a safer place, a place to which a journeyman artist would logically go. Similarly, a Burgermeister who thought that way was also likely to be the kind of selfless man who, once infected, would quarantine himself outside the town rather than risk bringing the plague into the streets where all his loved ones and friends lived their crowded, wall-bound lives.

Thomas’ hypotheses received an additional boost when the young artist took up his own drink and continued gesticulating with the other hand—which was clearly withered. “If I had not been so—so weak, so useless, this would never have happened.”

Thomas, who had resolved to let Larry handle this on his own, found himself objecting: “Herr Schoenfeld, I have known many cowards. You are not among their number.”

Schoenfeld looked at Thomas. “And how would you know this?”

“Because I have been in more battles than you have lived years and I can tell you this about cowards: they spend most of their time making excuses for themselves. The last thing they do is take blame upon their own back for fear that others will see them for what they really are.” He considered his next words carefully. “What I see right now is a man whom god, fate, or chance—your choice—intended for a different greatness. Perhaps to inspire men through your visions of the world, rather than to cause men to expire out of it.”

“As has been your lot in life,” Schoenfeld added the unspoken footnote.

“Unfortunately, yes. And I will tell you that nine out of every ten so-called ‘deeds of valor’ were merely acts of desperation that came out well. And that there is very little glory picking your way among the dead and dying after a battle.”

Schoenfeld’s answer was a strange, small, poignant smile. “As you say these things, my mind’s eye shows me what I have always wished to paint.”

“Come to Grantville,” put in Larry, “and I will show you that you did. I saw some pictures of your paintings before I came here: they are heroic, but always haunted by the horrors of war. Some critics said they could sense Breughel and Bosch lurking just beyond the margins of your canvases.”

Schoenfeld’s eyes—including the sightless one—were suddenly bright. “I would like to see these canvases—if for no other reason to know what now I will never paint.” Then the vitality seemed to ebb out of him. “But there is too much to settle here. Too many troubles.”

“Something that we can help with, perhaps?” Larry offered carefully.

“Maybe. I don’t know enough, yet. I just arrived yesterday and learned—well, about my father. And the other problems. It is difficult, adapting to so much, so quickly. Perhaps, if we were to meet here again tomorrow, at about this time—”

“We shall.” Quinn’s voice was firm and friendly. “And now, tell us about Italy. We have heard that there is trouble there.”

Schoenfeld rolled his eyes. “That is like saying that water is wet. I had been thinking of pursuing an invitation to go to the court of Count Orsini of Naples, but—”

Thomas managed to catch the eye of the beermaid and guide the lost beer to his waiting hand: listening to traveler’s tales was thirsty work, after all . . .





***





It was also thirsty work listening to German Burgers say “no” in half a dozen different ways, as Thomas discovered the next morning. It certainly made him want to have a drink. Or three.

The return to von Pflummern’s office was cordial but brief. The brother Christoph —the Stadtamtmann and the decidedly less-congenial sibling—did not even sit, but stood behind his brother, arms crossed, his frown as firmly fixed upon his face as his sharp-bridged nose. When asked if he had been part of the negotiations, he shook his head once and spat out a crisp, “Nein.” And that was all.

Unfortunately, the meeting with the Protestant Burgermeister wasn’t going much better. Another town functionary, Hans Kaspar Funk, was sitting stolidly in a chair beside the Burgermeister’s vast desk. As the town’s Pfarrpfleger, Funk ensured the timely and adequate external maintenance of Biberach’s churches, and he was also a member of the Innere Rat, or inner council. Not surprisingly, he had been named in the documents in Quinn’s possession: his involvement in the aerodrome negotiations was a matter of record. Indeed, he had been Kurzman’s primary point of contact for sorting out the details, once the general agreement had been reached.