The Devil's Opera(11)

Both women chuckled. Then Mary said: “No, best we stick with the Arthur legend.”

“Great idea,” Lady Beth said enthusiastically. She rubbed her hands together. “Get a couple of memorable songs out of it to put on the radio and send out the sheet music, and it could weld people together like nothing else. Only make it better than Camelot. I never could stand that show,” she muttered. “Julie Andrews—pfaugh!”

“And I know just the people to pull it off,” Mary said. “How soon can we get Amber Higham and Heinrich Schütz over here? What’s the use of having a theatre director and a great composer among your friends if you don’t put them to use?”





Chapter 5

Magdeburg Times-Journal

December 4, 1635





There was a formal groundbreaking last week for the construction of the new surgical wing of the Magdeburg Memorial Hospital in Greater Magdeburg. Participating were Mayor Otto Gericke, Dr. James Nichols, Dr. Balthazar Abrabanel and Dr. Paul Schlegel. Also present were Georg Kühlewein and Johann Westvol, members of the City Council of Old Magdeburg, respectively Altbürgermeister and Bürgermeister of that august body. Masters Kühlewein and Johann Westvol are among the leaders of the syndicate that won the contract to design and build the new wing. It is to be hoped that the new wing will be completed with all dispatch, as our growing city needs to be able to offer the best medical care available.





Stephan Burckardt, private secretary to Master Georg Schmidt, merchant, leading member of Magdeburg society, and member of the Council—the Rat—of Old Magdeburg tapped on the open door.

“Yes?” Herr Schmidt didn’t look up from the contract he was reading. “What is it, Stephan?”

“The newspaper has arrived, master.”

Now the merchant lifted his gaze from the paper he was scanning and held out his hand. “Let me see it.”

Stephan steeled himself—the boss would not be happy about this—advanced far enough to hand Schmidt the paper, then retreated through the doorway as quickly as he could.

From his chair at his desk out of sight of the merchant, Stephan licked his lips and wiped his forehead. The air seemed to be getting thicker, much like a sultry afternoon right before a thunderstorm. Except that this was colder.

Stephan picked up his pen, put it down, and shuffled some papers, unable to focus. The quiet in the other room was ominous. He knew from experience that nothing good could come from this. It was times like this he wished he was back with the men in the room across the hall, simply making entries in ledger books all day long; not subject to Master Schmidt’s direct gaze all day, nor privy to so many of the master’s secrets.

“Stephan.”

“Master?”

“Come take dictation.”

Maybe, Stephan thought to himself, the master wasn’t taking it so badly after all. He clung to that thought until he rounded the door frame into the office, whereupon the thought expired as if it were a mouse trod upon by an ox.

The master’s hands were clasped in front of him, and his head was bowed. Stephan stopped as he saw Schmidt’s fingers were twisted almost to the point of breaking, and they were clasped so tightly, the flesh of his hands was nearly corpse white. Tension radiated from the master’s shoulders, and Burckardt really wished he could be someplace else at just that moment.

Schmidt raised his head. Stephan swallowed at the fury boiling in the man’s eyes. His employer was by nature an angry man. God above knew that the master had shown a plenitude of evidence of it in the past. But this was beyond anything Stephan had ever seen before.

At least the master was not looking at him. Stephan edged away from the path of his gaze, as if out of the line of sight of a weapon.

“One would think,” Schmidt said, his normal rich baritone almost a whisper and sounding as if it were being forced through a sieve, “that one could count on his relations. I needed—my partners and I needed—that contract. And all my august brother-in-law, the oh-so-magnificent Otto Gericke, who gazes at the world from the heights of Magdeburg’s Parnassus and whose chamber pot does not stink like other men’s—all he had to do was hint to the hospital committee that they should favor our contract proposal.” His voice started to rise, his words coming more quickly. “But apparently that was beyond him! It was too much to ask him to help the husband of his sister. Or rather, his half-sister. His older half-sister. Let us by all means be precise. Never mind that Sophie—”

Schmidt broke off that thought. Presumably, some things he would not say, even in front of Stephan—who, for all practical purposes, had the position of a slave.