1636 The Devil's Opera (Ring of Fire) (37 page)

The CoC must have a new cartoonist, he thought. The maiden’s face was recognizably that of Wilhelm Wettin, complete with moustache. And little touches about Oxenstierna-as-minotaur, such as the tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, indicated an artistic vision that had been lacking in some of the earlier broadsheets that had lampooned the Swedish chancellor. Nonetheless, the point of this new cartoon was as savage and sharp as any he had ever seen.

Baldur pulled it back and looked at it a moment longer. “Girl’s ugly, though.”

Ulrik snorted as his sometime-lieutenant folded the broadside with care and stowed it in a jacket pocket. Before he could say anything else, one of Kristina’s ladies came around the corner and almost ran into him, much as he had encountered Baldur minutes earlier.

“Oh, there you are, Prince Ulrik. Frau Platzer says that you should come to the palace radio room now, please.”

Ulrik looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“Did she perchance give a reason as to why I should come?”

The lady dipped in a bit of a breathless curtsey. “Only that I should say ‘it’s starting.’”

“Ah. Indeed.”

With that, Ulrik headed for the radio room. He didn’t break into a run—quite—but Baldur had to stretch his shorter legs to keep up with him.

Caroline handed the prince the message sheets that the operator had written so far as soon as he came through the door. The most recent sheet was snatched up by Rebecca Abrabanel as soon as the operator’s pencil was lifted from it. Caroline read over her shoulder, and handed it to Ulrik as soon as they were done with it.

Ulrik saw immediately that Mike Stearns was making his break. The text of the first message sheet, directed to Chancellor Oxenstierna and repudiating him in elaborate and fascinating detail, made that abundantly clear. About the only thing Stearns had left out of the indictment, Ulrik thought to himself, was a charge that the chancellor had stolen the royal chamber pot and misappropriated its contents.

The second message, directed and offering support to Princess Kristina, produced a surge of relief in Ulrik’s heart. He had hoped, expected, counted on this happening. But until it did, there was always that faint chance that something would go wrong. Now, however, the die was cast; the almost frighteningly competent Stearns had committed himself to support the dynasty against the chancellor. A smile crossed his face as some of the tension he had been living with released.

Ulrik looked up to see Rebecca Abrabanel gazing at him.

“You planned this, didn’t you?” he asked.

Rebecca nodded. “Not in so much detail. There is not a lot we could do to coordinate between Magdeburg and an army somewhere in the field. But we’ve known for months that Wettin was losing control of his factions, and Michael himself made it clear to us that our only reasonable course was to support the dynasty against the reactionaries. Provided, of course, that the dynasty would in turn give us at least some recognition.”

She shrugged. “We didn’t know exactly what Michael would do, or when, but we knew it had to follow those general lines, so we prepared, and waited, and moved when we could.”

“Even down to Frau Linder and her songs,” Ulrik commented.

Rebecca shook her head. “No, that was totally unexpected. Not even Mary Simpson saw that one coming, or the effect it would have. Serendipity at work, perhaps.”

“Even so,” the prince acknowledged, “I believe I would rather not be at odds with the good Frau Linder. Where others use words as rifles, sniping at one another, she combines them with music and makes siege guns out of them.”

The next message was completed, and it made its way through the circle of hands. Ulrik read through the message to the legitimate parliament, then passed it on to Baldur. “So now we just wait to see if your husband’s strategy works,” he concluded.

Baldur snorted, looking up from the message forms.

“Stearns against Banér? That’s like pitting a hungry wolf against an old blind boar. The boar may gnash his tusks and squeal like mad, but the wolf will be eating ham and bacon and chops before long.”

Ulrik would remember that comment in the days that followed.

Chapter 42

Magdeburg Times-Journal

February 24, 1636

SIEGE OF DRESDEN LIFTED!

THIRD DIVISION TRIUMPHANT!

BANÉR BLOWN TO BITS BY HANGMAN REGIMENT!

Otto Gericke looked over the top of the paper at his head judge after reading the headlines.

“Well?”

“If I were the Swede,” Jacob Lentke intoned in his best judicial manner, “I would leave for Stockholm now. If he waits to pack his bags, it may be too late.”

Otto considered that for a moment, then shook his head. “He won’t do it, though. Too much pride at stake.”

Jacob nodded sadly. “And probably more people will die before he is finished.”

Chapter 43

Magdeburg Times-Journal

February 28, 1636

EMPEROR AWAKES!!!!

THE OX GORED FOR TREASON!!!!

DR. NICHOLS FLIES TO BERLIN

EMPEROR TO RETURN TO MAGDEBURG!!

Gotthilf looked around him at the people celebrating in the streets, then looked over at his partner’s profile. Byron’s craggy face was closed up, expressionless, as his eyes scanned their surroundings.

“Well?”

“No doubt it’s a good thing for the country,” the up-timer said after a moment.

“Yah.” Gotthilf agreed wholeheartedly. “Maybe things will calm down now.”

“Not the way to bet,” Byron said. “People haven’t changed any, and we still have at least two murderers and an arsonist running loose.”

“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.

Simon found himself in a narrow room with a small desk in one corner, and various robes and cloaks hanging from pegs on the wall. Pastor Gruber slowly settled himself in the only chair and pointed at a nearby stool.

“Have a seat, Simon, and tell me what is on your heart. Did you ever settle the matter of Samson in your mind?”

Simon sat, keeping his hands in his pockets due to the chill air even in the room.

“I think so, sir.”

“So,” the pastor repeated, “what brings you by today?”

“Well, it’s King David.”

“Ah. David the king, the man after God’s own heart. And have you discovered that he had feet of clay, as Samson did?”

“No, sir…I mean, yes, sir, that whole Bathsheba thing.”

“That whole Bathsheba thing, indeed,” Pastor Gruber said in a very dry tone. “Is that what is plaguing you today?”

“No. I think I understand that. But…it’s Absalom, you see.”

“Ah.” The old man nodded. “I see. Yes, a very tragic story. It is always a horrible thing when a son rebels against his father, whether the father is a king or a shoemaker.”

“No, that part I understand,” Simon replied. “It’s the other guy.”

The pastor’s eyebrows climbed his forehead like fuzzy white caterpillars. “Other…guy?” The American word seemed to perplex the older man.

“You know, the king’s friend, Ahith…Ahith…”

Understanding dawned in Pastor Gruber’s eyes. “Oh, you mean Ahithophel.”

“Yah, him. If he was the king’s friend, if he had worked for the king all those years, why did he turn against him like that when Absalom…”

“When Absalom rebelled.”

“Yah.”

The old pastor stroked his beard for a moment, staring at Simon.

“You know, lad, you ask interesting questions. Come; let us see if we can find an interesting answer.” He reached inside the breast of his coat and brought out a small and much worn Bible. Laying it on the desk, he opened it with care and began gently turning pages. “I think the answer begins in the story of David and Bathsheba.”

A few more pages were turned.

“Here we are. Chapter 11, verse 3, of Second Samuel. Come see, Simon.”

The boy got to his feet, and went to stand beside the pastor. A gnarled and bent forefinger traced a line of words.

“See, here it says,
‘And David sent and inquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?’
So Bathsheba was the daughter of a man named Eliam.”

The old man thought for a moment, then flipped a few more pages.

“Ah, yes, I thought this was here. Look, Simon, here in Chapter 23 verse 34 it says this:
‘Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite.’”
Again the crooked forefinger traced the words as they were read.

Pastor Gruber closed the Bible, rested his misshapen hand upon it, and looked into Simon’s face. “So, lad, if Bathsheba was Eliam’s daughter, and Eliam was Ahithophel’s son, what was Bathsheba to Ahithophel?”

Simon didn’t have to think very long. “His granddaughter.”

The old pastor beamed at him for a moment. “Right!” Then he sobered. “Do you think, Simon, that Ahithophel might have been just a bit angry with King David for committing adultery with his granddaughter, having her husband murdered, and contributing to the death of her first-born son, his great-grandson?”

Simon was already nodding. “Yah. Now I understand it. But why did he wait so long to hit back at the king?”

“Well, lad, Ahithophel was a king’s councilor, and they don’t think like other men. There might be several reasons why. But I think—just thinking about the kind of man that Ahithophel proved to be—I think he waited until he could do something that would really hurt the king, as much as he himself had been hurt. And supporting Absalom’s revolt would have hurt King David very badly.”