The Devil's Opera(90)
Before long he came to the low doorway into the tavern and ducked through it. Once inside, he looked around, saw that the crowd was still light. He released the breath he had been holding, relaxed, and headed for the counter where Veit the bartender was serving up mugs of ale.
A minute later, Stephan was seated at a scrap of a table in a back corner, elbows propped on the top and sipping at the ale. Sipping because it was better than Veit’s usual lot, and actually could be allowed to pass over the tongue slowly without inducing disgust or nausea or comparisons to the inside of one’s oldest boot.
Stephan wanted nothing more than to just let his mind empty out, but it kept worrying at Master Schmidt. He wasn’t sure what was going on, for the master was being remarkably tight-lipped about it, but he was certain that something out of the ordinary was in the wind. If for no other reason than the fact that the master had had him gather as much coin as he could quietly manage, exchanging what USE paper scrip was on hand with a few of the other merchants and those guild treasuries who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut. It wasn’t the first time that a merchant of Magdeburg had needed solid coin, after all, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Stephan knew who would keep a closed mouth, and that was who he had approached. Of course, one usually paid a premium when one desired quick service, but the master knew that as well as Stephan did, and had actually seemed satisfied in a sour sort of way at the sums that had been amassed.
But why? Stephan kept circling back to that question. Unfortunately, every time he arrived at it, the answer was still “I don’t know,” and that would start the process all over again.
Something was going on.
* * *
“Friend, you look like you’re at the end of a long day,” someone remarked. Samuel Bauer looked up in startlement to see a stranger sitting on the stool across the table from him. He’d been so wrapped up in his beer he hadn’t even perceived the man approaching.
He shook his head to clear his head, and shrugged. “Yah, a long day. But then, every day is long, right?” He raised his mug and sipped.
“True, true,” the other man said with a chuckle. “At least for those of us who have to work for our bread and salt and hope the masters and foremen have the money to pay us at the end of the day.”
They chatted back and forth, commiserating with each other on the evils of working for an uncaring boss, and congratulating each other on having won out so far by simply surviving. They had a friendly argument about the merits of Samuel’s job as a ledger poster for Master Georg Schmidt, and the other fellow’s job as a bricklayer.
The other man bought the second round when Samuel discovered his mug was empty, so it was only fair that Samuel bought the third. And somewhere after that he kind of lost track of a lot of things.
When he was awakened the next morning by his wife, his head was throbbing to the beat of a demon’s hammer and the taste in his mouth was beyond foul. And as he stumbled down the streets toward the bridge across the Big Ditch, he muzzily wondered what had become of his new friend…or even what his name was. He remembered it started with a P. Peter? Paulus?
* * *
Schardius looked around the main foyer of the opera hall. Good, no one was in sight. He slipped a key out of his pocket, walked over and unlocked a single door at the far end of the foyer. After stepping through it, he locked it again.
He smiled in the darkness at the thought of how surprised Frau Higham and others would be if they knew he had that key. It was amazing what a few pieces of silver could buy from someone low enough in the social ranks that everyone forgot about him…like the building custodian.
Schardius pulled a Grantville device from his pocket, cranked the handle several times, and smiled again as light bloomed in the darkness from the flashlight. He’d paid good money for the battery-less flashlight. Good money. And this wasn’t the first time that he’d found use for it.
Directing the light ahead of him, he continued his explorations of the nonpublic areas of the opera hall.
* * *
“Take a deep breath, dear.”
Marla obliged the seamstress by expanding her diaphragm to its maximum, which of course caused her waistline to also expand. The seamstress’ hands fluttered around her torso, checking the fit and making sure the cloth draped right.
“Right, dear, you can relax now.”
Air whooshed out of Marla’s lungs. The seamstress smiled as the expired breath made the frills of her cap flutter a bit.
“Move for me, please, how you would on the stage.”
Marla decided she was getting a bit tired of being this woman’s puppet—she wasn’t nearly as personable as Frau Schneider, the seamstress who made most of Marla’s clothes. But she stalked grandly back and forth a few times as directed, humming one of the big arias; then stood and made several of the grand gestures that the part of Guinevere called for.