But no. The singer concludes that it would be a sin. The girl must close the door to temptation on him. Damn, what an anticlimax. Nice tune, though. He called, "Encore, encore." Which, one of the down-time mail carriers had told him, in the Thuringen Gardens, meant just what it said. Not, "sing something more." It meant, "sing it again, Sam."
Why, "Sam?" Not a single one of the acts he had heard in Grantville had a singer named "Sam." He would have to find out when he had a chance. Before he left tomorrow, he would stop at the public library and ask.
Jerry Simmons sang it again. Wackernagel listened, committing the tune to memory and writing the words on a piece of scratch paper. It would be an excellent song to sing to girls he wasn't really serious about.
He couldn't afford to get serious very many more times. His income was stretched about as far as it would go, even with Maria's market garden for the Erfurt trade, what Rufina could bring in with her spinning and hostel for travelers, and the fact that Edeltraud had been able to continue on as a waitress when her father's inn was sold after his death.
He could sing it to Helena Hamm in Badenburg on his way home. It was a very pretty song.
Fulda
The gossip in the Fulda Barracks was better than that in Fulda itself. Things were pretty quiet, though, in spite of the Ram Rebellion going on in the other sections of Franconia. Dagmar, Sergeant Hartke's wife, said that the main concern of the soldiers was whether or not it would extend into Stift Fulda, since it was certainly lively enough down around Würzburg and Bamberg. And whether they will be allowed to go out and shoot some peasants if it did. Life had been dull.
Martin taught them his new song, admitting that he didn't know whether it was a "genuine Hank Williams" or not. The woman who introduced the singer hadn't said, and he'd forgotten to ask that when he stopped at the library to find out about "Sam."
As a kind of consolation prize, he treated Dagmar and the sergeant to a synopsis of the plot of Casablanca. One nice thing about regular visits to Grantville was that a man always came out with something to trade. Not goods—he was a courier, not a merchant. But ideas.
Badenburg, August 1634
By the time Martin got to Badenburg again, the kidnaping of Clara Bachmeierin in Stift Fulda was old news. Old, but crucial to the household in which Helena Hamm resided. Clara was her aunt, the sister of the inestimably belligerent Agnes. So he delivered all the information he had gathered.
"It's not that we don't care about the other people that the SoTF sent over there," Helena said, "but none of the rest of them are related to us. What do you really think?"
"They're doing their best." What else did he have to say?
From the back room, the apparently interminable family squabble flew on. This time, a new voice. A young one. Screaming, "But I don't want to apprentice as a pewterer. I don't want to spend my life molding tableware and figurines. I want to stay at the Latin school and then go to the university."
"Want, want, want. Why should it make any difference what you want, you little pipsqueak? Did anyone ask me what I wanted? Metals are important."
"The only metal I want to deal with is those new steel pen nibs that they're making in Jena, now. I want one for my stylus. Or . . ."
Helena sighed. "Jergfritz. My younger brother. Georg Friedrich Hamm, the Younger."
Wackernagel grinned. "Just as charming as your other brother, I perceive."
"Willibald has no patience with him. But Dietrich doesn't, either. Dietrich knows that if he should die, and all men are mortal, perhaps more so in the middle of this war than in a time of peace, then Fraas will have another ten years of controlling the shop before Jergfritz is old enough to take over. By that time, my stepfather will be close to sixty and a daily routine of pouring hot metal may have lost some of its appeal. So Dietrich is convinced that my stepfather's nefarious plot is to shut him out in favor of his younger brother."
They could still hear invisible dialogue going on.
"You want to be a pen-pusher instead of a respectable tradesman? Scribbling your life away instead of making something useful? It's high time for you to be articled."
"Or a key," Jergfritz yelled back. "I'd be willing to deal with a piece of metal if it was a key to my office in a fine government building."
Martin flirted a little longer and then proceeded along his route to Grantville. Where the news arrived that all was well in Fulda, the SoTF administrators having been retrieved.
Which, he hoped, might improve the general mood of the Fraas/Bachmeierin/Hamm household in Badenburg. But he doubted it.
On the Road Again
September 1634