1636 The Devil's Opera: Chapter Eleven

    Otto looked up from the document he was reading at the sound of the tap on the door frame. When he saw his father-in-law standing in the opening, he stood and moved around the desk.

    “Come in, Father Jacob, come in.” He ushered the older man to a chair. “How goes your gout today?”

    “Not badly, Otto. Not badly at all.” Jacob waved a hand at the desk. “Sit, sit, my boy. What are you poring over so intently?”

    “Oh, Father Christoff forwarded some documents from Fürst Ludwig that will be useful to me. He has granted me, or rather, the mayor of Greater Magdeburg, police authority over the properties of the Stift within the confines of the city.”

    Jacob’s eyebrows rose. “The new city?”

    “Not just the new city, but Old Magdeburg as well.”

    The older man’s face adopted a grin that could only be described as evil. “That means you will have unquestionable authority over nearly half of the old city, which also removes it from the sphere of influence of the City Council. Hah! Can I tell them?”

    Otto made a note to himself that one of these days he needed to find out just who on the council had offended his father-in-law, and just what they had done. Jacob was normally not a vindictive man, but this was not the first time he had indicated displeasure with the council.

    “No, because the Fürst sent a copy of the documents to them as well.”

    Disappointment showed on Jacob’s face, but he shrugged it off.

    “Oh, well. That is still good news. But enough of that. I won’t be long, must be someplace else soon, but I needed to leave this with you.”

    Otto picked up the leather folder that was pushed across the desk to him. He opened and scanned the document it contained. “Ah, you finished the opinion already.”

    “Yes. It turns out that we each of us had a surprising amount of case material in our homes. Not enough to reconstruct the archives, of course, but enough to provide some useful precedents. And the review by Master Thomas Price Riddle from Grantville was useful, as well. The man has the clearest of minds and a most incisive wit. I wish his health was stronger. We of the Schöffenstuhl would be delighted if he could come to Magdeburg and spend some days with us in discussions.”

    “Discussions. Hah. I know you and your cronies,” Otto smiled. “You would pick the poor man’s mind cleaner than a wishbone at a feast-day meal. You would leave him without two thoughts to keep each other company.”

    Jacob smiled in turn. “Perhaps.”

    Otto turned back to the document. “So your considered opinion is that the chancellor has no legal standing?”

    “For all of his prominent place in the Swedish regime, and for all that the emperor may have unofficially delegated imperial tasks and responsibilities to him from time to time, Chancellor Oxenstierna has no official position, standing, or authority in the USE, neither given by Parliament nor officially assigned by Emperor Gustav. Consequently, he has no basis to act as the viceroy for the emperor or as the regent for Princess Kristina in the USE.” Jacob shrugged again. “It is very clear; he has standing in the kingdom of Sweden, but none in the USE. There is no rule or precedent that authorizes or condones his actions here.”

    “So he is outside the law,” Otto stated.

    “Indeed.”

    Franz took the broadsheet being passed out by the young woman from the Committees of Correspondence. She marched on down the street, pressing copies of the broadsheet into every hand that would take one, and a few that tried not to. Marla took the other side of it, and they looked at it together.

    Marla had been surprised to find after they moved to Magdeburg that political cartoons were not a twentieth century original art form; that, in fact, political cartoons were ubiquitous in the seventeenth century. The one at the top of the broadsheet was a typical sample of the current state of the cartooning art: sketchy, somewhat awkward art combined with savage satirical writing.

    “Hmmph!” Marla snorted. “I need to have Aunt Susan send this guy some of my brother’s comic books. Let him learn how to draw real cartoons.”

    “I don’t know,” said Franz. “I think he did well with the horns on the chancellor.”

    Chancellor Oxenstierna had been drawn as a minotaur figure with sweeping horns; an obvious reference to the inevitable puns on his name that seemed to universally come to mind to both up-timers and down-timers alike. The Ox or Der Ochse, either way it referred to a bovine, and this particular figure was dressed in a fancy doublet.

    All the figures in the cartoon were labeled. Franz wasn’t sure if it was the artist or the editor that wanted to make sure that nothing was misunderstood, but it still brought a smile to his face.

    “Hmm, that’s the emperor lying on the bed,” Marla puzzled out. “But who are all these people kneeling? Holy cow, this guy’s lettering is atrocious.”

    “This one is ‘Free Electorate’,” Franz said, pointing to the label. “That one is ‘Freedom of Religion’, and the other one is ‘Freedom of Speech’.”

    “Who’s the girl in the corner by the bed?”

    Franz tilted the page, trying to get a better angle on the somewhat muddled drawing. “I think that is supposed to be Princess Kristina.”

    “So what is that he’s got in his hands that he’s aiming at the freedoms?”

    “Well, judging from the caption, I think it is a giant scalpel.” The caption read “Perhaps A Little Blood-letting Will Help The Emperor Regain His Senses.”

    Marla looked at him. “Scalpel?”

    “You know they used to bleed patients?”

    “Ick!” Marla thrust the broadsheet into his hands and started down the street. “I don’t get it.”

    They spent the next few minutes arguing about whether the drawing made any sense or not, walking along dodging other pedestrians, crossing streets, side-stepping wagons, carts, and the inevitable animal by-products. Wagon drivers were supposed to clean up after their horses, mules or oxen. Whether they did or not often depended on how visible a Committee of Correspondence member was.

    Their badinage ended as they stopped before a familiar door. The sign above the door read Zopff and Sons, and through the small panes of glass set in the door they could see the printing presses the firm operated. Franz opened the door, and they stepped in, to be greeted by their friend Patroclus.

    “Franz! Marla!” He advanced with open hands, albeit somewhat ink stained.

    “Don’t touch me,” Marla warned. “Last time you got that ink on me, it took me two days to get it off.”

    Patroclus laughed. “All right, I will keep my hands to myself, then. But what brings you to see us? We do not have a commission from you at the moment, do we?”

    “Nope,” Marla said. “Although I think the Grantville Music Trust will have the next batch of music to be printed ready before long.”

    The younger of the two Zopff sons, Telemachus, came up behind his brother just as she said that. He made a face. “Music. All the fiddly little bits with the notes and stems and flags going just so. I would rather set ten pages of words, even in Roman type, than a single page of music.”

    Patroclus landed a back-hand on his brother’s biceps. “That music has kept us in sausage and ale the last couple of years, and you should be thankful for it.”

    Telemachus made another face and headed back to his press.

    “So if you don’t have a commission for us, what is the occasion for your dropping by?” Patroclus asked.

    “I need a poet,” Marla said. Patroclus raised an eyebrow, and she continued, “I have a song with English lyrics, and I need them translated into good German. But it can’t just be a literal translation; a few of the lines will need to be modified to fit the modern circumstances. That’s going to take poetic skill. So, I’m hoping you know a man we can contact.”

    “Hmm.” Patroclus rubbed his chin, leaving a trace of ink behind. “A poet, who reads up-timer English, and is skilled at his art. And is in Magdeburg. I can think of several who can write doggerel, good enough for that.” He nodded at the broadsheet that Franz was still holding. “But one who is truly worthy of the name poet?” He shook his head. “My mind is empty.”

    Telemachus turned around from the typesetting bench he was working at. “Logau might be able to do it.”

    Patroclus looked back at his brother. “Who?”

    “Friedrich von Logau. You know, the guy who wrote that epigram you like so much:

    “Was bringt den Mann zum Amte?

    Vermutlich seine Kunst?

    Gar selten, was denn anders?

    Fast immer Geiz und Gunst.”

    Franz saw a hint of confusion on Marla’s face. For all that she was adept at the Amideutsch that was common around Magdeburg and Grantville, and for all that she was better than adequate at the local dialect and in the specialized language of music, poetry was another level of skill she hadn’t fully developed yet. He ran through the epigram in his head one more time, then translated it for her as:

    “What brings a man into public office?

    Presumably his ability?

    Very seldom, so what else?

    Almost always, greed and connections.”

    “Hah!” Marla’s face lit up. “Okay, I don’t know kielbasa from bratwurst as far as German poetry goes, but if that’s his attitude, I think I like the man.”

    “The CoC like him,” Telemachus said before he turned back to his work.

    “I can see why. So where do I find him?” Marla turned back to Patroclus.

    “He has been writing things for the Times-Journal.” He shrugged. “Start with them.”

    Ciclope and Pietro moved to the side of the road and stopped to rest their horses. Magdeburg had been in sight in the distance for some time, but Ciclope saw no reason to exhaust the animals. They were pretty worn as it was. It had been a long fast ride from Venice, and there had not been much grain available for a lot of the way. And truth to tell, neither he nor Pietro were the most accomplished riders around, although they were somewhat better now than they were when they began the ride. Now that the end was in sight, he didn’t begrudge their mounts a few moments of rest.

    “So tell me again, One-Eye,” Pietro muttered, “what are we going to be doing here? And why did we come all the way from Venice to do it?”

    Ciclope hardly ever thought of his birth name. For years, ever since he had lost his left eye in a desperate fight, he had gone by the Italian form of Cyclops. It piqued his sense of humor; he was a solid bulk of a man, but not inordinately large, and the thought of being compared to a giant did make him smile a bit every now and then.

    “Pietro, how many times do I have to tell you . . .”

    “One more time. What are we going to be doing?”

    Ciclope sighed. “I don’t know. All I know is the boss got a request to send two men to Magdeburg who will not be known to the residents nor to the up-timers from Grantville, and who ‘know how to handle difficult situations.’”

    “Sounds to me like somebody is trying to be clever.” Pietro spat to the off side of his horse.

    “Perhaps,” Ciclope nodded. “But the boss owes a favor to the guy who sent the request, so here we are. And we don’t dare leave without doing the job.”

    Pietro shuddered. “Nay. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in this land of barbarians, and if we were to go south of the Alps back to civilized country, the boss would find us.”

    Ciclope reached up and adjusted his eye patch. “Sooner we get into town, meet the new boss, and get the job done, the sooner we can get back to Venice.”

    “Let’s go, then.”

    The two men urged their horses back into motion, and headed for the capital of the USE.