Grantville Gazette - Volume V, page 22
part #5 of Grantville Gazette Series
"That's probably about the best you can do," Thomas Price Riddle said. "What a goddamned mess."
* * *
"So," Jonas Justinus Muselius asked cheerfully after the conclusion of the hearing on the Murphy marriage, "What did you learn?"
Pastor Ludwig Kastenmayer looked at him. "That the up-timers who continually assure us that introducing their way of doing things would greatly improve and simplify the existing seventeenth-century practices are often sadly mistaken."
"That, too, is valuable to know," Muselius answered.
Johann Georg Hardegg, who was of course one of Kastenmayer's parishioners, nodded his head solemnly.
"It is undoubtedly true," Kastenmayer continued, "that my service on the Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt Ehegericht for the next few years, sorting through the debris of failed betrothals and marriages, is going to be very time-consuming."
Muselius nodded.
"Yes," Hardegg said. "Undoubtedly."
"Therefore, I think," Kastenmayer said, "given Count Ludwig Guenther's budgetary problems, the parish is going to have to find some way of funding a salary for at least one assistant pastor on its own, without relying on a subsidy from the consistory."
Hardegg, who by virtue of his university degree had been installed as a member of St. Martin's board of elders almost the instant he took up residence in Grantville, suspected that he had been had. Coming up with a source for that salary and persuading the parishioners to pay the money would now be . . . his job.
February, 1635
"Since I'm going to hell anyway," Pat said to Dennis, "it seems a little silly for me to insist that we have to have a Catholic wedding now. Which we probably couldn't for ages and ages and ages. If ever. I'll marry you Methodist. Or at city hall. Or anywhere you please. I just want to keep the same rings."
* * *
"After all these years!" Dennis Stull said. "After all these years, now Pat agrees to get married someplace other than a Catholic church. If she would have done that in Leavenworth in '65 . . . Henry Dreeson says he'll do a civil ceremony for us next week if you think it's too hot to handle."
The Reverend Simon Jones looked at his wife.
"'In for a penny, in for a pound,' the Reverend Mary Ellen said. "After all the furor surrounding the marriage of Wes Jenkins and Clara Bachmeierin, we can't get into any more hot water with the Veda Mae Haggerty's of First Methodist than we already are."
"True. When the pot is boiling, you're in it, and the cannibals are dancing around," Simon said, "what difference does it really make if you drop another log on the fire yourself?"
* * *
As Joe Stull said to Dennis later that week, the stuff that his and Tony Adducci's people had put together was a big help in confirming everything that Laura Jo told them about the way Horace Bolender and the Cunninghams were working that scam, which meant that the creeps got stiffer sentences than if everybody from Noelle Murphy to Carol Koch to Gordon and Jim Fritz hadn't done all that work, at least.
That was at Dennis and Pat's wedding, though. Dennis wasn't really listening.
CONTINUING SERIALS
Suite For Four Hands
By David Carrico
Intrada
Grantville
Late July, 1633
As he turned from closing the door of the Bledsoe and Riebeck workshop, Franz Sylwester found several pairs of eyes focused on him. "Well?" his friend Friedrich Braun asked expectantly. "What did the nurse say?"
Franz struggled to keep his expression solemn as he took his jacket off. He heaved a sigh and turned to hang it on a peg by the door. As he faced the others again, Marla moved closer and placed a hand on his arm.
"Franz," she started softly, obviously ready to comfort. He couldn't hold it in any longer, and broke out in a smile, then laughed.
"Frau Musgrove declares that my hand is good, is healed." He held his left hand up and flexed his fingers. The thumb, index and middle fingers moved easily. The ring and little fingers were still frozen in the same curved shape they had healed in after the knuckles were crushed in Heydrich's assault, but even those fingertips flexed a little. "So, I now have enough of a hand to hold things."
"Franz!" Marla squealed. She grabbed him and swung him around. "That's great news!" Friedrich, Anna and Thomas crowded around to slap him on his back in congratulations.
Ingram Bledsoe came in from a door at the back of the workshop. "What's the occasion?" Marla bounced over to him and gave him a swift hug, leaving him looking a little surprised but smiling nonetheless.
The others stepped back from Franz, who lifted up his hand again and flexed the fingers, smiling. "Nurse Musgrove says I am not to come back, that I am healed."
"Congratulations!" Ingram stepped forward to shake hands. "That's great news!"
Franz held up his good hand for quiet, reached into his pocket and dug out a three-inch rubber ball. "Marla," tossing the ball to her, "please give this instrument of torture back to your niece. Tell her I thank her with all my heart for the loan of it, and that I never want to see it again!" Everyone laughed with him again, but they were all aware of how hard he had worked the last few months with that ball to rehabilitate his hand . . . squeezing it over and over and over again in every unoccupied moment . . . squeezing it until his arm ached to the elbow with the effort. They knew what drove him—the determination that he would not be a cripple, that in some way he would again be able to support himself.
Marla moved up and took his arm in both her hands.
"Franz," she said, "to celebrate this occasion, we've got a gift for you." He looked at her quizzically. "Anna, the first part's yours." Franz looked at his friend, wondering what was going on, while everyone else shifted around like young children trying to stifle exclamations. Anna walked over to a chest against the far wall, a chest that had come with them from Mainz, opened it up and took out a bundle wrapped in burgundy velvet. She handed it to Thomas, who passed it to Friedrich, who unwrapped the cloth to display a violin. As he held it out toward Franz, Marla felt him stiffen.
"That . . . that is . . . my violin," he stuttered.
"Yes," from Friedrich.
"How . . . how . . ." he stopped, swallowed, and forced himself to composure. "How is this possible? I smashed it . . . did I not?"
"No," Anna stepped up, smiling, "no, you did not. You did smash your bow that night, and you endeavored to likewise destroy your violin. You did indeed throw it at the wall that night, in your fever and your anger, but you ran out the door before you could see that although the scroll hit the wall above the bench, the body hit a cushion instead."
"The scroll was scraped," Friedrich added, angling the instrument to show the traces of the mar, "but I was able to smooth it down and apply new finish to it. And so," pressing the violin into his friend's hands, "it returns to you. Both are somewhat older, both are somewhat stressed by your experiences, but you still suit one another very well. We kept it safe until you were ready to hold it again." He stepped back, leaving Franz to clasp the instrument he thought he had destroyed—to hold it gently and pass one hand in a caress over its top.
Still staring at the violin—his violin—Franz said, "Never has a man had friends such as you. When I regained my senses, in my wanderings after I left Mainz, I grieved over this, grieved most sorely. The thought that I had wantonly destroyed my violin, made solely for the creation of beauty in a world that has not enough of it, did try my soul indeed." He looked up, blinking, eyes bright with unshed tears. "And today you have restored it to me. I have not words to thank you as you deserve." He looked back down at it as the tears spilled over, caressed it again, then embraced it for a long moment, his cheek leaning against the scroll.
The room was quiet, everyone respecting Franz's emotions. He finally looked up again, smiled a little, and said, "Thank you. I thank God for you, my friends, who have saved me, and now have saved my violin as well. Now I am free of that guilt, and I am free to find someone who will take it from my hands to love it as I do and to play it as I no longer can."
Marla took his arm again and turned him to face her. "Now for my gift. Franz, you don't have to give it up. You can play."
Franz was shocked that she would say such a thing, and a flash of anger and sorrow went through him. "Do not mock me, Marla." Holding up his left hand, he said, "Even with the healing that has been done, I cannot finger the neck I cannot play."
"Maybe you can't finger the neck with that hand, but I'll bet you can hold a bow with it now! Switch hands! Learn to play with switched hands!" Marla was grinning with delight and bouncing slightly in her excitement. Franz felt stunned. Was it possible? Could he do it? He felt dazed, as if he had been hit in the head. He saw Marla put her hand over her mouth to keep from giggling, so he was sure he looked as amazed as he felt.
"It's true," Ingram said, grinning himself. "I knew a mountain fiddler once who had an accident that left his left hand like yours. He just taught himself how to finger the neck with the right and learned to bow with his left. Last time I saw him, he was just as good that way as he was 'tother."
Franz shuddered, and his jaw snapped shut. He felt an excitement building in him, and his eyebrows climbed to meet his hairline, causing Marla to giggle. He looked at her, and asked, "Do you think I can do this?"
"I know you can."
Taking a deep breath, Franz turned to Friedrich and said, "My friend, how long until you can make me a bow to grace the violin you have restored to me?"
"As it happens," Ingram interrupted, "that's my gift to you." He brought his hand out from behind his back, and presented a bow to Franz. "I always seem to end up with odds and ends of musical stuff. I've had this bow for ten years, never had a fiddle to go with it, never could bring myself to get rid of it. Now I know why. I was savin' it for you. It's made in the up-time style, not like the ones you're used to, but I believe you'll actually find it easier to hold with your hand the way it is."
"So," Marla spoke again, "you have your violin, you have your bow, you have your hand, and you have your friends. What more do you need?"
Franz looked around at the smiling faces, and smiled back. "Nothing."
"Then get started."
"As you wish, Mistress Marla," and he danced away from the jab she aimed at his ribs.
Bouree
Grantville
August, 1633
As he was giving the tuning knob a final twist, Franz heard the door open.
"So, have you decided yet?"
Franz looked up from his violin to see his friend Isaac Fremdling entering the choir room. "Have I decided what?"
"How you will string your violin, of course? Will you string it in the usual manner, or will you reverse the order of the strings?" Isaac pulled one of the chairs around and sat down.
"What do you think I should do?"
Isaac fingered his moustache, and after a moment of contemplation said, "'Twould perhaps be best to keep the usual order of the strings. In that manner you and another could play each other's instruments with no difficulty."
"An advantage, to be sure," Franz replied. "Yet think of this, if you will: it will likely be easier to learn to play again if each right finger will move in the same manner and in the same relationship to the strings as the left does—if to play an 'F' the related finger makes the same motion, only mirror reversed, if you will."
"A point," nodded Isaac.
"And then consider the bow. Would it not be easier to train myself to reproduce the position of the bow as in a mirror, rather than in a totally different angle and position?"
"Aye," Isaac nodded again.
"Well, then, Isaac, you have answered the question, have you not?"
"It seems that I have, at that," his friend laughed. " So you have decided, then?"
Franz chuckled, and held up his violin. "Friedrich has moved the sound post inside and made a new bridge. I just now finished the stringing and tuning. Behold, a mirror violin." He handed the instrument to Isaac, who examined it closely, tested the tuning, then attempted to place it under his chin.
"Pfaugh! It feels most unnatural to try to hold it under the right chin. But if anyone can do this, Franz," he handed the violin back, "'tis you."
"My thanks. I've no choice, you see, for now that I see a glimmering of light in the night, I will pursue it with all my heart."
Isaac looked at his friend, his expression sobered, and he said quietly, "I grieved for you when I heard of the attack."
Franz looked down, uncomfortable as always when offered sympathy. "I thank you, but as you are so fond of saying, 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' My pride needed curbing, I freely admit. I could wish that the manner of that curbing had not been so severe, and that I had been calmer and wiser and more considerate of my friends afterward. But it took long months of being alone before I began to slowly grow wise, and it was not until I found my way here to Grantville that I could begin to understand how and why you would say that. The Lord gave, the Lord took away, the Lord gave again, and I have learned to bless Him no matter my circumstance."
"Then you are indeed wise, my friend, for there are few enough even of gray-hairs who possess wisdom that equals what you have just shared." Isaac paused for a moment, then chuckled.
Franz raised an eyebrow.
"My initial reaction to your misfortune was grief indeed," Isaac said, "but hard on its heels came indignation in harness with rage. I must admit that the thought of applying the consequences of the Golden Rule to Heydrich did cross my mind more than once or twice."
"Surely you did not . . ."
"No, I could not bring myself to do it in cold blood. But there were others of like mind, and I doubt not that their conversations did find their ways to Rupert's itching ears, there to alarm rather than soothe. In truth, he began to company with various fellows, brutes from low taverns, in fear of what had been rumored. And he found no ease in that none of the rest of us would be alone with him thereafter. All of us found it to be most humorous."
"Well, I am not saintly enough to not find some small pleasure in hearing of his discomfort," Franz smiled.
"Oh, aye, before we left Mainz he had become almost two men, one moment the loudest of braggarts, the next like a nervous hind when the hounds bell out. I have seen the man's head almost swivel completely in a circle as he tried to watch his own back."
"The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth," Franz chuckled. "It is perhaps the best vengeance. He will torment himself more than I could or would, and my hands and heart are clean."
"Indeed." There was another moment of quiet before Isaac continued, "As I said, I grieved when I heard. Of all my friends and fellow musicians, your love of the art is most like my own, and I knew well how I felt when someone attempted to take it from me."
Franz raised an eyebrow again.
Isaac made a hand motion as if brushing off a table top. "You know that I am out of the Jews, but I say nothing of my life before Mainz. I knew, however, what you would feel. I was born Isaac Levin. My father is—I trust he still lives—a rabbi in Aschenhausen, where our forebears settled when the elector expelled the Jews from Saxony. Early in my years I showed promise of music, and he desired me to become a cantor. But other music enticed me, that which I heard from the taverns, through the windows of the merchants' houses and the doorways of the salons. I hungered for more than the Psalms, for more than the music of our traditions. The wealth that was to be heard away from the synagogue filled my heart. I could not see how beauty such as that could not exist in God's presence, but my father rejected it. He forbade me, he lectured me; as I grew older he reasoned with me. He even took a rod to me more than once.
