The Tangled Web(89)

Joel snorted. "It's Romanesque. That's why St. Mary's looks the way it does. Mr. Piazza told us that back in CCD classes. St. Mary's is neo-Romanesque. American architects copied this stuff. St. Mary's is just smaller and the bricks are yellow instead of red."

"You need to look at the bronze doors," Simrock said. "They're old."

"As old as the rock piles under the aqueduct that's not there any more?" Jeffie grinned.

Simrock counted to twenty. "Not quite. About nine hundred years newer, but they're still old. They're about seven hundred years old."

"Too old," Reichard said. "What's remarkable is that they're still here, seeing that they're bronze. Over time, almost anything cast in bronze has gotten melted down in one war or another to make weapons. That's one of the perks that artillery companies have when they take a town. They get to confiscate the church bells to melt them into more cannon, so they can demolish more towns."

Simrock nodded. "It's really astonishing that the doors have survived."

"We should go inside and look at the stained glass," Joel said. "Colored windows with those Gothic pointy tops and curlicues worked into the glass are always cultural, as Ms. Mailey would say."

"As in, 'Don't you barbarians have any culture at all?' " Jeffie said to Ulrich. "I wish I hadn't grown too responsible to climb up on those pilings with you."

"Responsible?" Joel snorted. "You?"

"That's 'Sergeant Garand,' now, if you please."

"The windows are idolatrous," Theo protested. "Well, they are. Graven images."

Everyone else ignored him.

"Who is, or was, Ms. Mailey?" Simrock asked. To Eberhard, he whispered, "She may have had a point. I'm pretty sure she did."

The party inspected the stained glass windows. Joel cocked his head. "I think the ones in St. Mary's are prettier. Imported from Austria, you know. The coal barons really did our church up right."

"I thought there weren't any barons in America," Eberhard said.

They explained coal barons on their way to the party's next destination.

"The Johanniskirche," Simrock said. "St. John's. The Swedes have turned it into a Lutheran parish church for the city. The canons in the chapter at the cathedral are complaining, of course—not to mention the canons from what used to be the Johanniskirche. General Brahe told them that they should be happy that he took the smaller church and left the cathedral to the Catholics."

Theo inserted a mutter about the lack of a Calvinist parish church.

Reichard pointed with pride to the service being provided to the Calvinists of Mainz by the public room of the Horn of Plenty.

Simrock diverted them down another street over-built with half-timbered Fachwerk houses. "Now here, going through the Kirschgarten, and coming to the Leichhofstrasse . . ."

"You've got a 'Graveyard Street'?"

"Well, it does go to the cemetery." He shrugged. "And this is the hospital."

Jeffie cocked his head. "How on earth old is that?"

Simrock chewed his upper lip. "Four hundred years, I'd say. Give or take a few in either direction."

Jeffie cocked his head and whispered to Joel, "The accumulated germs would give Dr. Nichols nightmares, I bet."

"Where did Gutenberg invent the printing press?" Joel asked, masking that comment. On their way to that sacred spot, he asked again, "What's the big building site?"

Simrock shook his head. "They started on building a new electoral residence about six years ago, but it got interrupted by the war. Now it's just a muddy mess."

Jeffie shook his head. "The whole town doesn't look much like the pictures in the guidebook that was in Len Tanner's collection—the one Mary Kat saw."

Joel was getting tired. "Can it with acting like a brat, Jeffie. That's because all the stuff they built between now and then is missing. It's like Fulda, that way. Mainz hasn't gone Baroque yet."

"Where are Friedrich and Margarethe?"

"They said they had things to do."



Friedrich looked over his shoulder. "Shouldn't we be sneaking in at night, or something?"

Margarethe shook her head. "If it were night, Rohrbach would be here. He hasn't moved out of the room over the shop just because Sybilla is dead and old Binder has moved to the Horn of Plenty to cough the rest of his life away. If it were night, he would be right here, asleep. The whole point, Fritzi, is to come in the middle of the day while he is gone, carrying the key in my hand for everyone to see. Anyone who notices us will suppose that old man Binder sent us on a very proper and public errand." She looked at him, her dark eyes big and round. "That's something I learned when I was much younger. If you plan to disobey your father, it's tremendously important to look like such an idea would never cross your mind."