The Devil's Opera(109)

“Point,” Gotthilf sighed.

He checked his gun.





Part Four

March 1636

When modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state always change with them.

—Plato





Chapter 44

Magdeburg

And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father.

* * *

“Stop,” Simon said. Ursula quit reading and waited while Simon thought through everything that she had read from II Samuel about the rebellion of Absalom against King David.

“This is going to be another one of those stories where I’m not going to like the ending and probably won’t understand everything that’s going on, isn’t it?” he finally asked.

Ursula smiled a bit as she placed a ribbon in her worn Bible and closed it. “That’s possible,” she said.

“But why did this guy Ahith…Ahith…”

“Ahithophel.”

“Yah, him. Why did he—when he was such a friend of King David, why did he take the other guy’s side?”

Ursula shook her head. “I don’t know. The story doesn’t seem to say. It certainly doesn’t seem very nice, does it?”

“No,” Simon muttered.

Ursula picked up her latest embroidery project. “You’d best get out and make your rounds. I’ve got to get this done for Frau Schneider today.”

* * *

Andreas Schardius leaned forward in his chair, crossed his arms on the railing at the front of the opera house box, and rested his chin on them. It was fascinating to watch as Frau Higham drilled her performers for the stage performance of Arthur Rex. The best singers in Magdeburg and its surrounding environs had become part of the cast, many of them quite familiar with large choral works and pageants. But this largest of large scale work in a true theatrical setting was taking most of them to a newer level of performance than anything they’d previously experienced. The discipline needed to walk and gesture and sing at the same time, to hit a mark on the stage at the same word in a song—the same syllable—every time, was something new to them, and Frau Higham had labored with them in what she called “blocking” to get them used to it.

Schardius had not been there for all of it, of course. He was a businessman who liked music, not a musician who dabbled in business, and the requirements on his time were many and consuming. But he had seen pieces of the effort now and then, when he had been able to slip into the opera house and watch. The performers had progressed from Frau Higham walking them through a narrative, sometimes physically taking singers or chorus members by their arms to move them to the right spots, to “walk-throughs” where they would recite their lines as they stepped through the evolutions of the story, to finally arrive today at the first rehearsal where they were trying to put it all together.

It sent chills down his spine to see this piece coming into focus. It promised to be so far beyond the Monteverdi productions he had seen in northern Italy that it was all he could do not to laugh and exult out loud.

He stifled that reaction, though. Frau Linder—Marla—was entering this scene in the second act, where as Guinevere she confronted Arthur about his infidelity.

* * *

Once again Simon was haunted by a Biblical account as he went about his normal routines. No matter who he talked to, what errands he was running, Ahithophel’s story wasn’t far from his mind. And so, sometime in the afternoon, when his steps took him past St. Jacob’s, he turned them to the doorway of the church.

There was a large family party exiting the church as he drew near. Since there was a bundle of cloth carefully cradled in a young woman’s arms, it wasn’t hard to guess that there had been a baptism earlier that afternoon. He stood and watched for a moment as the happy family gathered in the chill March air and chattered, men shaking hands and women gathered around the beaming mother, breaths frosting in the air.

After a moment, Simon shivered and craned his neck, looking this way and that for Pastor Gruber. Just as he was about to give up and leave, he heard a call.

“Simon!”

He looked in the direction of the voice, and there the old man was, walking around the edge of the crowd. The old pastor crossed the intervening distance to join him and took him by the arm.

“How are you, lad?”

They walked off together, around the family and toward a small door into the church building.

“Fine, I guess,” Simon said.

“So, did you just come by to see an old pastor today, or did you have something on your mind?” Pastor Gruber held the door open to let the boy in, then closing it behind himself.