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Franconia! Parts 2 and 3

Written by Virginia DeMarce

PART II

ASK AN AUGUST SKY

 

If that my lines, being placed before thy book,

Could make it sell, or alter but a look

Of some sour censurer, who's apt to say,

No one in these times can produce a play

Worthy his reading . . .

Which to this tragedy must give my test,

Thou has made many good, but this thy best.

Joseph Taylor (To his long-known and loved friend, Mr. Philip Massinger, upon his "Roman Actor")

 

Magdeburg, May 1634

 

'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,

Hard times, hard times, come again no more.

Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.

Oh! Hard times, come again no more.

 

The guitar provided a driving rhythm behind the young woman's voice as she repeated the refrain for the fourth time. There were many better voices in the world, but perhaps none better suited to this song.

 

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,

While we all sup sorrow with the poor.

There's a song that will linger forever in our ears,

Oh! Hard times, come again no more.

 

In response to Philip Massinger's wave, the waitress plunked another stein of beer down on the table in front of him. Why hadn't he heard this song in Grantville? It was obviously an up-time song. It was the music, the rhythm, that made it new. The music with the words. The singer smiled at the audience. "I learned that off a Bob Dylan album."

Not that its ideas were new. He had already written, years before,

 

Some undone widow sits upon mine arm,

And takes away the use of it; and my sword,

Glued to my scabbard with wronged orphans' tears,

Will not be drawn.

 

He had intended to move to Magdeburg for the urbanity, the opportunities, of a large city. He had come to see it, leaving the boys in Grantville with his wife to finish the school semester. He had come to see the capital of this new . . . nation, yes, nation . . . growing and developing. He was no stranger to the idea of nation. Or country, at least . . . And patriotism, if not yet called by that name.

 

What though my father

Writ man before he was so, and confirm'd it,

By numbering that day no part of his life

In which he did not service to his country;

Was he to be free therefore from the laws

And ceremonious form in your decrees?

Or else because he did as much as man

In those three memorable overthrows,

At Granson, Morat, Nancy, where his master,

The warlike Charalois, with whose misfortunes

I bear his name, lost treasure, men, and life,

To be excused from payment of those sums

Which (his own patrimony spent) his zeal

To serve his country forced him to take up!

 

Zeal to serve his country. How did it differ from this "patriotism?" As Tom and Dick's grandfather had written, A rose by any other name . . . Fanciful. Having passed a half century on this earth, he was becoming as fanciful as a man in his dotage. In any case. The song needed to go into the play that the boys were writing. Rewriting. What would the authors care if he added to their work? Or the composer care if he added his song to the opera of other men? They were dead. Or not yet alive. So he would go back to Grantville. Magdeburg could wait for him. For six years, after leaving Oxford, he had toured these Germanies in a troupe of actors. He could tour them once more before finding a safe haven in the capital of this new country . . . this new nation.

 

Grantville

 

Joe and Aura Lee Stull hosted the cast party for the high school production of Oklahoma! because . . . Amber Higham counted the ways. Their son Billy was stage manager . . . they had room . . . Aura Lee was willing to do it. Unlike pre-Ring of Fire cast parties, it included parents, foster parents, guardians, and anyone who had been willing to loan a costume or a prop, which made it a fairly large undertaking. Amber looked around and concluded that except for her nagging worry as to exactly where some members of the chorus—specifically Anthony Green and Carly Baumgardner—were and what they might be doing there, it was going very smoothly. She moved to the kitchen door in hopes of spotting the truants in the back yard. Warm weather was a blessing. Warm weather was not always a blessing.

A good-sized group of the men had retreated to the back porch. Joe Stull wandered into the kitchen and slid past Amber, with an expression on his face that made her suspect he was vaguely hoping that Aura Lee was too busy to notice his flight from hospitality duty. Not all truants were teenagers.

****

"I am a playwright, yes." Philip Massinger waved his hand at someone, a German, whom Joe hadn't met yet. "But an artisan of words, in no way really different from a wheelwright or a millwright. I take materials. Words, perchance immaterial but yet materials. A man can scarce write a play without them. I have my tools. Pen and paper rather than hammer and anvil, but tools."

The other man grunted.

"A wordsmith," Massinger continued. "Just as you may have a blacksmith or a goldsmith, and there is no more mystery to the craft. It is something that can be learned. True, some write better plays than others, but then everyone knows that some masters in any craft produce better work than others. Some, perhaps, one should just call 'fully competent.' Others have a spark of genius. But that applies as well to the making of saddles as the making of poems." He paused. "I even work frequently with others, meshing my work with theirs. An immature poet imitates; a mature poet steals. Yet I consider myself to be changing the products of others to meet specifications. Improving upon them, I would hope. You have a word for this. I found it when I looked myself up in the encyclopedia. I was known for many collaborations. Most, alas, had been lost by the time of the Ring of Fire, so I presume that I will have to go to the labor of writing them again, those I produced between now and my death, with no idea beyond the titles of what they may have contained the first time I wrote them. However . . ."

Massinger's voice trailed off; then resumed in a different tone.

"Joe, good to see you. Have you met Wilhelm Schaupp from Weimar? He's the uncle and guardian of Zacharias, who's living with George and Lorrie Mundell while he goes to high school. Zach's the boy who translated a lot of Tom and Dick's version of Oklahoma! into German for us. I'm trying to talk him into letting Zach go on tour with us this summer."

"Yeah, I know Zach. Billy's had him over several times. Pleased to meet you." Joe stuck out his hand.

Massinger smiled as he continued his introduction. "Herr Stull is the Secretary of Transportation for the State of Thuringia-Franconia."

Schaupp looked at his new acquaintance with considerably more interest and took the hand that was waving in front of him.

"Herr Stull's son Billy will be touring with our troupe this summer, I hope." Massinger's emphasis was subtle, but unmistakable. After all, what minor bureaucrat in Weimar would object to having his nephew become a close friend of the son of a higher state official? Well, there might be one. Somewhere.

"In your dreams," as Billy would say.

Herr Schaupp would be a summer friend, whose flattering leaves, that shadowed a man in his prosperity, would with the least gust drop off in the autumn of adversity. Not that one should disdain the shade while it existed. Perhaps some patronage might be attainable through Schaupp. Massinger smiled, his pale blond, almost invisible, eyelashes blinking in the flickering light of the gas lanterns that the Stulls had installed at the rear of their house.

****

"All the girl who plays Laurey has to do is look pretty and be a soprano with enough volume that her voice fills the theater. She doesn't have to be able to act. She doesn't even have to be a spectacularly good singer, because the sung portion of the role has a lot of duets and ensembles. Amber has assured me of this. The person who plays Ado Annie has to be able to act, but not Laurey. Pretty is enough. Stand, look pretty, and sing a little."

Antonia Massinger frowned at her husband.

"Tom will play Ado Annie, in any case. I have found no girl in Grantville with the proper feel and timing for comedy."

She would play the part of Aunt Eller herself, of course. There had never been any doubt of that, not from the first glimmer of Philip's new idea. One of the many things she hated about the English was that their benighted censors had never allowed her, in nearly twenty years, to appear upon the public stage. Private theatricals, yes, but not public ones. If she hadn't loved Philip so much—if she hadn't impulsively plunged into marriage with him, a foreigner, when she was barely twenty and had a great career before her in Stuttgart—she would have shaken the dust of the place from her sandals and returned to civilized lands. What had Dick's girlfriend told her the word was? "Retro." Yes. England was certainly "retro."

Now that she was back home, she intended to be a full partner in their enterprises, and that included casting the female parts for this . . . cabaret . . . that the boys wrote and which, greatly expanded by Philip, they would include as a novelty in their tour this summer. And going back on stage. Playing any roles that a woman nearing her fiftieth year could play. One had to admit that the English at least wrote meaty roles for a woman of a certain age. Gertrude. Lady MacBeth. Perhaps it was because the playwrights knew that men, not infrequently themselves or their next friends, would be acting them and thus granted themselves starring parts. But one should take a boon where one found it without excessive questioning of the bounty.

"This means?" Massinger steepled his fingers together.

"Barbara Ostertag has the range to sing Laurey's songs. Lorrie Mitchell, the up-timer she lives with, is willing to let her go with us. Even if that were not so, Barbara is twenty, of age as the up-timers see it. She can make up her own mind."

"You. Barbara. Tom. Who else?"

"We can hire local singers for the chorus every place we go. That will increase interest in the piece. Not to mention saving a lot of transportation expense. The music will all be new to them, but it is not that difficult."

"Not as we have transcribed it for the cabaret. My ears are much more at peace with the songs from Oklahoma! when they are performed without the orchestra. With just the melody line and a lute, a couple of violins, perhaps a recorder for the themes. Or violin, viol, shawm and sackbut. Pipes, perhaps? No dissonant overture. No clashing intervals or harmonies. No . . ."

"Old-fashioned, Philip. Grievously old-fashioned. The young people . . ."

". . . rarely have enough money to pay for tickets. It is their parents who pay for tickets. If we offer a play that pains the ears of those who attend the first night, there will be no audience for the second or the third." He shook his head. "Who will understudy Barbara?"

"Anna Maria Reisdorfer. The girl from the 'beauty shop.' In a pinch, she can also understudy Tom. We only need to hope that both Barbara and Tom are not indisposed for the same performance."

"Find someone else who can understudy Tom. I have trust in divine providence, to be sure. But not that much trust. Surely one of the boys from the troupe we gathered together on our way to Grantville can do it."

"We have been here for months. Their voices have all changed. The male roles are no problem. There are three of us who could understudy Dick for the role of Jud. Any of them can also understudy Ned Bass for Will Parker. Two who can understudy Ludovic for Curly. All of them, with enough makeup, can understudy you if the need arises. Don't worry. I will find someone else who can act Ado Annie. As Amber says, that role must be acted."

"I want an up-timer, even if she may be lacking in the timing and feel for comedy. Another novelty. Something we can put on placards to attract the audiences. We're not in this business as a matter of charity. When she isn't needed as Ado Annie, she can sing Gertie. When she is . . . always make sure that one of the chorus members knows Gertie's lines."

"Yes, dear." Antonia's voice dripped honey.

"Ask Amber. She must know someone."

"Yes, dear." A pause. "Do you really think I was born yesterday?"

The motion of her buttocks, as she departed, had to be classified as a flounce. Ah . . .

 

The sum of all that makes a just man happy

Consists in the well choosing of his wife:

And there, well to discharge it, does require

Equality of years, of birth, of fortune.

 

In this matter, Massinger counted himself fortunate indeed.

****

"Mariah Collins for Ado Annie," Amber said. "She sang a couple of character roles. And Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls her senior year. Her perpetual case of the sniffles brought the house down, though Grantville always has a pretty generous audience for the high school plays. She graduated in 1632. Not a pretty girl, I'm sorry to say, but she has aptitude. She took the geology summer camp training right after she finished high school. She's been out in the field working, but just finished up her contract and came back to see about her sister Megan. Their parents were left up-time and she's not too happy that Megan's gotten engaged to Ronnie Baumgardner.

"Actually, Ronnie's okay as far as I know, but his father . . . I can see her point. Zane Baumgardner isn't anyone that I would want on my grandchildren's family tree. If I had ever had children, that is. Way too late, now that I finally have a decent man in my sights. He's still not someone I'd want on my prospective step-grandchildren's family tree. Thank goodness, none of my nieces ever got involved with the guy.

"Anyway, since Mariah got back, she's been paying her expenses by checking out sites for the silo corporation, but she's restless. I expect she'd enjoy a summer tour with a theater group."

 

Würzburg

 

A manuscript version of Franconia! arrived in Würzburg less than a week after Philip Massinger finished his modification to the Quiney brothers' version of Grantville's spring play. His portions, too, Zacharias Schaupp translated. Georg Rudolf Weckherlin received it with the incoming mail, opened it, and was lost to useful work for the rest of the morning. When Steve Salatto and Anita Masaniello got back from an important, and protracted, meeting with the cathedral chapter, they stopped for a minute in the anteroom, frowning.

"What is that?" Steve asked. "He's whistling?"

They stood for a couple of minutes more.

"'Everything's up to date in Kansas City,' I think." Anita wrinkled her brow. " Where did Weckherlin ever hear or see Oklahoma!?"

"Nowhere." Steve barged on into the outer office over which Georg Rudolf Weckherlin presided. "What's that?"

Weckherlin looked up and grinned. "Ah. A splendid new satire. Franconia!, it's called. Marvelous. These songwriters have you Grantvillers pegged. Skewered, even."

 

Jetzt ist alles ganz modern in Grantville.

 

"It laughs about your Frau Higgins and her enormous modern hotel. Grantville had no such building before the Ring of Fire. Nothing even approaching it. No, this great modern up-time town had to come back to the seventeenth century in order to build itself a 'skyscraper several stories high.'"

"That was 'seven stories high,'" Anita commented absently. "And it was Kansas City, not Grantville, where everything was up to date. What on earth do you have there?"

That shot the afternoon for all three of them.

"Damndest thing I ever came across," Steve proclaimed. "Look, 'Hard Times' wasn't in Oklahoma! It wasn't by Bob Dylan, either. Maybe he recorded it, but it's Stephen Foster. You know, the 'Old Kentucky Home' guy—that song they sing—sang—will sing—before the Kentucky Derby. Like 'Maryland, My Maryland,' before the Preakness."

This required some explanation.

"It's not 'Maryland, My Maryland,' really," Anita pointed out. "It's, 'O, Christmas Tree' and that's 'O Tannenbaum,' and that was German to start with."

"We're way off the point."

"Which is?" Weckherlin's smile was more than a little sardonic.

"What have these guys—the Quineys and Massinger—done? I've seen that movie. There wasn't a single place in it where the cast was standing around waiting for William Jennings Bryan to come into town and make a speech. Singing 'Hard Times Come Again No More.' Stephen Foster lived way back when. Back before the Civil War, I think. That has to be a hundred fifty years before Dylan recorded it. This is just a . . . a . . . a mish-mash."

"In many ways the plot is wondrously rational for a comedy. No identical twins separated at birth. Not a single pretty maid disguised as her mistress. No cases of mistaken identity leading to quite incoherent consequences. Not to mention," Weckherlin added rather dryly, "that it incorporates quite a large number of bits and pieces out of propaganda pamphlets associated with the Ram Rebellion into Bryan's speech once he makes his triumphant arrival upon the new railroad. I've seen other plays by Massinger in London. Can we assume that he wanted to play a considerably more prominent part in this . . . project . . . than was available for a man of middling years in the original version."

"Probably." Anita frowned. "There was an older man in the movie who had some dialogue with Aunt Eller, but he sure wasn't a starring role. Do you remember who it was, Steve?"

"Naw. Skinny guy, I do remember that. Which probably means that he didn't make much of an impression on me. It was the two of them, the scrawny guy and Aunt Eller, that sang about how the cowboys and farmers ought to be friends, wasn't it?"

"Is that in here?"

"Yes." Weckherlin flipped through several pages. "Here. With a nice scene in which Laurey's aunt shoots a gun to stop the fight. And she's 'Aunt Gretchen,' not 'Aunt Eller.""

 

Lass' die Ritter und die Bauern Freunde sein.

 

"Not a bad idea." Steve grinned. "Let the knights and the peasants be friends. I'll support that sentiment all the way."

Weckherlin caroled the end of the refrain:

 

Es gibt kein' Grund dass sie nicht Freunden seien.

 

"Um. I think there was probably some reason why they couldn't be friends." Anita raised her eyebrows at her husband. "They sang that just before the big fight at the square dance, didn't they?"

"Fakest fight I ever saw on screen."

"Be reasonable, Steve. It was a musical comedy, not method acting."

"Still the fakest fight I ever saw. I could have lived with the silly ballet, but that stupid fight . . ."

"What ballet? There is no ballet in this." Weckherlin's voice conveyed certainty.

"They probably don't have a cast who can dance ballet. I'm sure they don't have a cast who can dance ballet, in fact. Only Bitty Matowski does. They must have just left it out."

Anita and Steve started to dissect the manuscript on the basis of what had been omitted and what had been inserted.

"Another thing I'm absolutely sure of," Anita Masaniello said firmly. "No way did Rogers and Hammerstein write 'Is Your Harp Upon the Willow?' That's bluegrass, and it definitely didn't lead into the finale of Oklahoma!" She sang a few lines.

"Franconia isn't exactly Oklahoma," Weckherlin answered. "Nor is it ever likely to be."

"How do they sing 'Franconia' to 'Oklahoma' anyway? The rhythm's different."

"The Latin form is only for the title. See. In the song, they sing, 'Franken, Franken,' doubling up the name of the territory. Which is not Oklahoma, clearly. Just to start, it has no plains for the wind to sweep down."

"Which could explain why they left that part out of the translation. Where's the wind sweeping from in this . . . tour de force?"

"The Thüringerwald, of course. From Thuringia, into our 'brand new state.'"

 

Würzburg, June 1634

 

"Where did the railroad car come from?" Tania Haun asked over the sounds made by five children under ten, two teenaged boys, and one adult male eating as fast as they could.

Mike Mundell put his spoon down and swallowed. His mom was just death on talking with your mouth full. "Well, Massinger put in the presidential candidate giving the speech. Then it came to me. Something back in eighth grade civics. We saw a documentary with a lot of old newsreel in it, about someone running for president on a train. 'Whistle Stop Campaign?' I think that was it."

"I wonder how long the middle school has had that documentary. We saw it in eighth grade, too, and I've got to be twenty years older than you are. Truman, was it? Or wasn't it?"

"What did you think of the rehearsal yesterday?" Zacharias Schaupp asked a little anxiously.

"It was okay," Johnnie F. said around the last bite of his breakfast. Mike and Zach were staying with him and Tania while the traveling actors were in Würzburg. Frau Massinger had been more than happy when the "American colony" offered to board most of the Grantville kids, up-time and down-time alike. First, it meant that she did not have to supervise them. Second, it saved a lot of money.

Mike disposed of another mouthful of rye bread. "Why just 'okay'? Tom and Dick worked hard on this thing. So did Zach. And Mr. Massinger."

"Well, there's something missing. I was on stage crew for Oklahoma! back when I was in high school myself and I'm darn sure that Laurey wasn't a shepherdess."

"Well, Mr. Massinger says that here, down-time, people who come to see the play need to know right away that the girl the hero is in love with is all right. You know, pretty and virtuous. And shepherdesses are automatically pretty and virtuous. In poems and plays. Not in real life, but that doesn't count. Besides, he wanted to use that stupid 'Lady of the Lambs' poem he found in the library and have it set to music. So Ludovic, being Curly, stands there and sings at her:

 

She walks—the lady of my delight—

A shepherdess of sheep.

Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;

She guards them from the steep.

She feeds them on the fragrant height,

And folds them in for sleep.

 

 

"Barbara can't act for sour shit. She just stands there in the middle of the stage looking cute, so he needed something to make it clear to the audience right off that she was one of the good guys. Of course, Mrs. Massinger—she spent a lot of time volunteering at the high school last semester—went, 'Gag me.'"

"So did Anita after the rehearsal last night. Maybe it'll catch on with the Ram Rebellion people. But Laurey and her aunt were farmers. I remember that much. Maybe Massinger could write the aunt as being the Ewe instead of Gretchen. Or the Ewe in addition to Gretchen . . ."

Johnnie F. worried the idea around in the back of his mind all day and started in on it again at supper. "I guess a shepherdess is okay. Bo-Peep and all that. Mary's little lamb. But still, farmers are more important. Back when I was in college, we learned this song . . ." Johnnie F. started to whistle.

"That's sorta catchy."

"Yeah. But it's the words that were really good. Lemme think . . . It went all the way back to the Grange movement, maybe. I'm not so sure that I remember all the words."

"Can you give me just a general sort of idea? It's not as if Mr. Massinger's exactly short on words, and he'll have to put them into German anyway."

"Sort of. Lemme think . . ." Johnnie F. rapped the words out with a fair rhythm but not much in the way of a tune.

 

The farmer is the man, the farmer is the man,

Lives on credit 'til the fall.

Then they take him by the hand, and they lead him off the land,

And the middle man's the man who gets it all.

 

"Oh, gosh, Johnnie F. We've got to do that one. It'll be easy. Der Bauer ist der Mann, der Bauer ist der Mann . . . 'Hand' rhymes with 'land' in German, too."

"Sounds to me like they're exactly the same words. That's the refrain. The first verse is something like this,"

 

The farmer comes to town with his wagon broken down,

But the farmer is the man who feeds them all.

If you'll only look and see, I think you will agree

That the farmer is the man who feeds them all.

His pants are wearing thin. His condition is a sin.

They've forgot that he's the man who feeds them all.

 

"There's all sorts of 'thems' who've done the forgetting in the rest of the verses. Bankers and preachers and merchants and butchers and cooks. There's a whole bunch of verses."

Mike jumped up. "Hey, Tania. Can I take Johnnie F. downtown to the inn where the Massingers are staying? Right now? Mr. Massinger's got to hear this. Right away."

"It's almost dark."

"But if Mr. Massinger starts tonight, we can have the song in the play tomorrow. That's the way these actors work. None of that nonsense about having a printed script in front of you and memorizing the lines just exactly. They carry a lot of it in their heads. Improvise. Though a lot of the time," Mike admitted honestly enough, "that's because I've messed up something with the props. I was just assistant stage manager for Oklahoma! Billy Stull was the stage manager. He wanted to come, but his dad thought he'd be better off staying in Grantville and taking trig in summer school. Mom and Dad didn't mind if I came, especially since Zach was coming anyway. Plus, Billy's grandma wasn't very pleased with the idea that he might go off with a touring company of actors, even for the summer. You know Mrs. Hudson, don't you?"

"Oh, sure," Johnnie F. said. "I know Vera and Willie Ray. Willie Ray's an okay guy."

****

The Massingers were staying with the Weckherlins, having a prior acquaintance with Steve Salatto's "office dragon" and his English wife, who was the daughter of the Dover city clerk.

"Just a few more changes to the script, Philip" Weckherlin suggested during breakfast. "By the way, I'm sorry it's porridge again."

"Cheerful looks make every dish a feast, and it is that which crowns a welcome. Truly, without good company all dainties lose their true relish, and like painted grapes, are only seen, not tasted. You were saying?"

"Much of the pastiche is a bit sophomoric. Especially the jokes."

"This is understandable—and forgivable—given that those who produced it, with the exception of my own additions, were almost all high school sophomores."

"Will is an obvious, traditionally comedic, character. I see no problems with your using him as the boys wrote him. Jud fits much less easily into a comedy. Though this is scarce a comedy, nor yet a tragedy. Jud fits very uneasily into a satire intended to show peasants as the heroes. Nonetheless, if we leave him out of this one, there is even less for Laurey to say and do. And for a full stage production, to display Curly as a protector of the innocent heroine, we need a villain . . . Almost, he needs a play of his own, a true tragedy, if one could conceive of a crude hireling as a tragic figure. The mere challenge of writing a tragedy whose central figure is not of high station at the beginning is daunting. Could one, and still have the outcome be tragic?"

Weckherlin closed his mouth and whipped his wandering thoughts back into order. "In any case. Almost anyone who reads for pleasure understands 'westerns' by now. They are very popular. Let the Reichsritter represent the arrogant cattlemen. If you use this song for a meeting between conservative members of the Bamberg city council and several deposed imperial knights who do hold the opinion that the Ram movement is a scandal—an outrage . . . Es ist furchtbar! Es ist scheusslich!

"Truly, with a bit of 'massaging,' it could reach a more elite audience. Become a staple of your repertoire rather than just an interesting novelty. Perhaps we could contact Melchior Franck in Coburg. Surely he has a few students who could harmonize the original music into an opera score that is more in accord to contemporary taste. I am myself particularly charmed by 'Ado Annie.' I have indeed already, since observing the rehearsal last evening, composed some suggested modifications to her most important song, making the German translations of the verses a bit more sophisticated than your Zacharias Schaupp managed, adding some internal rhymes . . . If you would be interested . . ." He sang, a little raspily, "'Ich bin ein' Magd, die nie "nein" sagt.' Meyfarth in Bamberg, once your players get there, can also probably improve somewhat on young Schaupp's German verses . . ."

"I understand Ado Annie's appeal for you, Georg. A girl who 'cain't say no' must unquestionably attract the author of 'Seduction in the Garden, or Love Among the Cabbages.'"

"More seriously, though. Franconia has already voted to merge with Thuringia and become a state within the USE. Once Gustavus Adolphus finishes the summer's campaigning, though, he will be faced with how to handle his conquests. Now, these lines . . ." Weckherlin picked up the manuscript. "Where the singer admonishes the people that when the territory joins the union and becomes a state, those of all ranks and callings must 'behave themselves and act like brothers.' Perhaps . . ."

"Yes, of course you are right. Those verses lend themselves beautifully to an expansion of William Jennings Bryan's speech. Ah . . . of course, at present Antonia is singing them. She wouldn't be particularly pleased if I took them. Particularly not since my singing voice leaves much to be desired."

"You could speak them. Right after Bryan's attack on corruption. 'Petitions, not sweetened with gold, are but unsavory and oft refused; or, if received, are pocketed, not read.' Then she, as the lead among the women in the audience, could repeat them and break into the chorus . . . I must find some better German than young Schaupp came up with for rhyming 'pals' with 'gals.' How do you intend to handle the sometimes rather harsh criticism of the emperor?"

Massinger cocked his head. "'Detraction's a bold monster, and fears not to wound the fame of princes, if it find but any blemish in their lives to work on.' I'm sure that I can find some suitable approach." He turned to his older apprentice. "Dick, a suitable line, if you will."

Dick Quiney stood up and declaimed.

 

Great men,

Till they have gained their ends, are giants in

Their promises, but, those obtained, weak pigmies

In their performance. And it is a maxim

Allowed among them, so they may deceive,

They may swear anything.

 

Weckherlin nodded his agreement. "True. 'Put not your trust in princes.' God said so himself. The proverb runs that, 'ambition, in a private man a vice, is in a prince a virtue.' We admonish that 'he that would govern others, first should be the master of himself,' yet we also say that 'the desire of fame is the last weakness wise men put off.' Or even, often enough, men less wise. So. What do you—we—say of those Nicodemites who privately agree that there is a need for change, but are too cautious to give those changes their public support?"

Massinger turned his head in the other direction. "Tom?"

Tom hopped up next to his brother.

Factions among yourselves; preferring such

To offices and honors, as ne'er read

The elements of saving policy;

But deeply skilled in all the principles

That usher to destruction.

 

"Apropos. Very apropos." From Master Massinger, that was an accolade. Dick and Tom accepted it as such.

****

"We did, in fact, perform it in Grantville before we left. Once, in the auditorium at the Middle School since the high school auditorium is booked well in advance all the time. So the advertisements are perfectly true." Antonia Massinger laughed.

"It was an inspiration to take 'Many a New Day' away from Laurey and give it to Ado Annie. Mariah does a much better job with it. Gives it some bite." Anita Masaniello was perched backstage on an upturned salted herring keg.

"Amber Higham assured me, before we hired her, that she had aptitude for comedy."

A crash came from behind the draperies, accompanied by a shout of, "Hands off, you creep."

Anita raised her eyebrows.

"Mariah acts the part so deftly that it has caused Ludovic some difficulty in believing that in private life, she is perfectly capable of saying, 'no.' He stomps around in the mode of, 'I will now court her in the conqueror's style; Come, see, and overcome.' To which Mariah does not respond well."

"That's Mariah. Aptitude, yes. Attitude, too."

"As to Ludovic, what pity 'tis, one that can speak so well, should in his actions be so ill! If he would only transfer his attentions to Barbara, where they might be more welcome. Perhaps she would find them flattering. She would welcome some flattery these days. She was not happy when Philip told her that Mariah would be singing 'Many a New Day' henceforth. Particularly since Philip had already changed the song about the lovers' taking a carriage ride into a satire about the cost of the Forchheim bypass and given it to Curly and the chorus instead of keeping it as addressed to her. We have all the would-be lovers in Franconia complaining that since that one stretch has soaked up the whole road improvement budget, you couldn't drive a surrey anywhere else in the region if you tried. Philip told her that it was fine, since Curly was singing the shepherdess and sheep song to her, but she found no consolation in that. I have allotted her three more costumes to wear in the scenes where she appears, one of them genuine up-time. That has helped."

Overall, the opening night—or, more precisely, the opening afternoon—of Franconia! in Würzburg, "with the genuine Grantville cast," had to be delayed for four days while the actors scrambled to learn all the rewritten bits and pieces.

 

Bamberg

 

"Oh, good glory. Well hit, well hit!"

"Otto, what are you screeching about?" Else Kronacher stuck her head through the curtain that divided the sales room from the print shop, glaring at her younger son.

"This line in the new play:"

 

Pray enter.

You are learned Europeans and we worse

Than ignorant Americans.

 

"And precisely who are 'we' in this case?"

"A Persian salesman, slick and oily, bent upon the seduction of the heroine's friend. Presumably representative of all the reprehensible subjects of the Porte who daily threaten the peaceful tranquility of the Germanies."

"Ach, the trash that you read. When in your life have the Germanies been tranquil or peaceful?"

"Why Mutti, you, yourself, told me to set this Franconia! in type." Otto's gaze was the epitome of innocent hurt feelings.

Frau Else knew better.

"For the other, since I was born in 1618, the first year of this war, not a single year."

"I knew you would be a source of trouble the first time I laid eyes on you."

"Mutti, you can fairly and justly hold me accountable for some things. Quite a few things. But my birth was not a causative factor for these wars. Ask Herr Eddie. He will explain it to you."

"Where's Melchior?"

"Out posting the placards. May I see the play when it comes to Bamberg? Please?"

"Why should I let you spend our hard-earned money to see a play when you have already set the whole thing in type?"

"It has music, they say. Music, too. Printing music is not the same as hearing it. I'll do the woodcuts showing the melodic line for each song and its verses on separate sheets after I have finished the dialogue. It will be tricky to put together. On some of the pages, I'll have to end the type in the middle, because the song comes next. They don't always come out even."

"If it looks as if that is going to happen, then use smaller type for a couple of pages until you can back the extra lines to the end of the last full page. There's no point in wasting paper. It doesn't grow on trees, you know. I'm going to the market." Frau Else pulled her head back through the curtain.

Otto smirked at the curtain and whispered, "How sweetly sounds the voice of a good woman! It is so seldom heard that, when it speaks, it ravishes all senses." Aloud he called, "Bye, Mutti."

****

Quiet night, that brings

Rest to the labourer, is the outlaw's day,

In which he rises early to do wrong,

And when his work is ended dares not sleep.

 

Tom Quiney eyed the insert he had just added to the margin of a locally printed copy of Franconia! "That works, doesn't it? I nabbed it out of The Guardian. Act II, Scene 4. We just have to change it to the 'Ritter's day.' Who cares that it's not new? We're not doing The Guardian on this tour and it's not as if most of the people coming to the plays are literary critics."

"It's fine." Otto Kronacher found Tom and Dick Quiney to be kindred spirits. "When does Herr Massinger need the revision? Give me back that copy." He jerked it out of Tom's hands. "I can't read your writing. Just tell me what needs to be done and I'll write it in."

"He is scheduled to meet with the Committee of Correspondence on Tuesday. They have made quite a few . . . suggestions, shall we say. Modifications in point of view that a prudent man would make before the play is performed in Bamberg. They want to review the changes at the meeting. Patience, the beggar's virtue, shall find no harbor here."

Otto waved his pencil. "There isn't any harbor in Bamberg. Not unless you count the piers on the river."

"Quit your nonsense." Melchior pulled his brother's nose and then turned to Dick. "That's censorship. They're supposed to be defending freedom of speech. And all the other freedoms of stuff."

"Ah. It's tricky. As Master Massinger has written, 'What a sea of melting ice I walk on!' They are not censoring us. Perforce not. They have in no way forbidden the production of the play. They have merely indicated that if certain unhappy members of the audience should happen to take exception to it as it stands, the forces of law and order might not be able to restrain them from venting their indignation at the first performance. Just a friendly warning."

"But we have friends in the CoC." Melchior's voice was getting louder. "We know them. They aren't supposed to behave like that."

Tom frowned. "Master Massinger says that the changes they want aren't 'substantive.' Well, he wasn't happy with their demands. But he has been censored before, in England, far more extensively. Once they required him to take a whole play and rewrite the setting from modern Spain to ancient Rome because it's comments on politics were too . . . forthright. Even then, the office did not grant him a performance license. So let us do what we must. 'To doubt is worse than to have lost; and to despair is but to antedate those miseries that must fall on us.' Mostly, they want to have their own people shown to be heroic."

Otto grinned. "Then, like Pastor Meyfarth says, 'let us put the best construction on everything.' Don't think of it as censorship, Mel. Think of it as local patriotism. Maybe we ought to stick Pastor Meyfarth into the play, too. Just for a few lines."

Tom cocked his head. "What's he like?"

"Who?"

"This pastor of yours."

Otto provided a short synopsis of the Twelve Points of the Peasants, accompanied by the news that his sister had her eye on the pastor.

Tom and Dick looked at each other. Tom leaped up. "Verily, I say unto you, and with only a few changes in the pronouns,"

 

He, that would be known

The father of his people, in his study

And vigilance for their safety must not change

Their ploughshares into swords, and force them from

The secure shade of their own vines, to be

Scorched with the flames of war.

 

"That's got it. That's exactly the kind of thing Pastor Meyfarth says all the time."

"Fine. In he goes. What else?"

"The Thornton. We could put in the Thornton."

"Let's put in Pastor Schaeffer, too. The one spouting propaganda for Freiherr von Bimbach. Someone can tell him, 'You may boldly say, you did not plough or trust the barren and ungrateful sands with the fruitful grain of your religious counsels.'"

Dick leaned back. "Guys, you're getting off the point. We don't need the Thornton and the Schaeffer guy. I have the notes that I took for Master Massinger at the meeting, so let us proceed onward and see what can be done to suit the CoC. Pay attention, Otto. Jud Fry has to go. Or, at least, he can't be a hired hand, even if you want to keep the name. The villain has to be either a nobleman or the son of a reactionary city council member."

"Check. Just a minute. A nobleman named 'Jud Fry' isn't very likely, is it? Even in England. I don't think they had noblemen in America, did they?"

"So make him the loutish son of a city council member. We don't have time to agonize. Tuesday, remember. Tuesday. Fix your eyes and thoughts on Tuesday. Here, in the long speech, William Jennings Bryan says,"

 

Equal nature fashion'd us

All in one mould.

All's but the outward gloss

And politic form that does distinguish us.

 

"That's when Aunt Gretchen sings,"

 

I'd like to teach you all a little sayin', and learn these words by heart the way you should.

I don't say I'm better than anybody else, but I'll be damned if I ain't just as good.

. . . sei ich verdammt, wenn ich nicht ganz so gut bin.

 

"They don't want Master Massinger to take that song out, but they want Old Käthe to sing it instead of Aunt Gretchen. Because they don't want the audience to get confused with Gretchen Richter. Not that it isn't something she'd say, probably."

Otto marked up his copy.

"Then they want Brillo to come up and say, 'Whaddaya mean I'm no better than anybody else? I'm way better than that Merino ram." Dick sighed.

Otto marked up the other margin.

Tom frowned. "We'll have to make sure that Aunt Gretchen and Old Käthe and the Ewe are never on stage at the same time, because Antonia's playing all of them. Tell Mike Mundell that two of them will have to wear capes. Different capes. She won't have time for real costume changes. Which one of the three needs to be most important? That one won't wear a cape."

"The CoC people didn't say. They ought to be happy if it's either Old Käthe or the Ewe. Those are from around here."

Otto smiled, a wicked, wicked smile. "Does Mistress Antonia absolutely have to play all three of them?"

"Well. She's the only actress in the company who's the right age."

"Does the singer have to be really, really, good?"

"Not for all the scenes. In a lot of them, the chorus is singing, too."

"Then we can solve Master Massinger's 'Ewe problem.' And get to see the play, too. Several times, probably."

Melchior opened and closed his mouth. Also several times. He looked like a gasping fish. He didn't manage to utter any moderating words before Otto stuck his head through the shop curtain and called, "Mutti."

****

"I don't want to hear what they told Master Massinger after it's over and done. Not even if he is willing to live with the censorship. He's been . . . Otto, what is that word Herr Eddie uses?"

"Conditioned, Mel. Conditioned. You've got to focus on memorizing those vocabulary lists."

"Yeah. Master Massinger has been conditioned to accept censorship. I haven't. You and Dick and Tom shouldn't be either. It's just . . . wrong, I guess . . . what they're making him do to his play. Plus, maybe he's only telling us what he thinks we ought to hear. Doing like Pastor Meyfarth and putting the best construction on everything. Maybe they've been treating him worse than he has admitted."

"It's not likely that they're making him do things we don't know about." Otto pointed to the type bins. "After all, we're the ones who are printing the script with the changes in it. We have to know what all of them are."

"They could be making worse threats than he's told us about. So I still want to hear what they tell him while the meeting's going on. What's to keep them from looking at this version and telling him to make more before it suits them. And still more. It's creeping . . . creeping something. I forget the word. I want to be there and listen. Wasn't one of those proverbs that Herr Eddie had us memorize that 'power corrupts?'"

"'Power tends to corrupt.' Herr Eddie wants us to memorize them exactly the way they are written." Otto shook his finger. "Remember how Pastor Meyfarth says there's really a big difference between, 'Money is the root of all evil' and 'The love of money is the root of all evil.' Herr Eddie thinks the same way."

Dick got up and stretched. "Master Massinger puts it this way. 'Conscience and wealth are not always neighbors.'"

"What was it that he said? Exactly?" Tom asked.

"Herr Eddie? 'The devil is in the details.' That's why we have to memorize all the proverbs exactly how they are written. He calls it mental exercise." Otto flipped through the pages of the script, looking at the marginal notes he had made. "Anyway, there's a sort of problem with going to listen to the Committee of Correspondence meeting, Mel. Nobody invited us."

"And that is a problem because . . . ?" Tom raised his eyebrows.

With Tom in charge, it turned out not to be a problem. More in the nature of a project. Monday evening, they moved Frau Else's ladder, the one they usually used to wash the shit (literal) thrown at the Kronacher print shop by various dissenting apprentices off the stucco, to a different wall of a different building.

Nobody noticed it, particularly. It was a dirty ladder. Bamberg had a lot of dirty ladders.

The new location happened to be the tavern where the CoC met. However, the ladder was located three rooms behind the CoC meeting room, on the opposite side of the building, and reached to a window one story higher.

The trick was getting out of adult sight on Tuesday morning. Early enough on Tuesday morning.

Tom and Dick told Mistress Antonia, the evening before, that they were going to the print shop again, the first thing, to check any last-minute changes, and would take their breakfast there.

Otto and Melchior didn't tell Frau Else anything at all. They left a message with the elderly maid. Hanna, increasingly hard of hearing, got the impression that someone had borrowed the ladder the previous day and they were going to a neighbor's house to carry it back.

Otto had counted on this. He had, perhaps, worded his message in such a way as to cultivate precisely that impression. Hanna did not question the amount of food that Otto and Melchior took with them on what should be such a brief errand. The need to satisfy their appetites frequently caused their mother to emit despairing cries when she sat down to balance the household budget.

They found the window to which the ladder pointed. Open. Dick had kissed Christina, one of the chambermaids at the inn behind the tavern—kissed her several times—to ensure this fortuitous circumstance, assuring Tom that his efforts proved he was willing to undertake immense hardships for a higher cause. Which Tom doubted: Christina had a gamine face. She looked like a pixie with straight black hair. The hair around her face did not grow long, but rather fell in wisps down over her forehead. Tom would have been willing to kiss her himself if he had the chance. In any case, it was just as well she hadn't wanted money. Gold—the picklock that never fails—was one thing that none of the boys had.

Dick had met Christina through Otto, who had met her at Pastor Meyfarth's church while he was chaperoning his sister Martha during her weekly devout attention to the pastor's sermons—or to the pastor who was delivering the sermons, more likely. He had taken her backstage to a rehearsal, telling her to wear her brightest clothes and then hiding her among the local hires for the chorus. Where she had performed just as well as anyone else, to his surprise. She had a good alto, even though no more training in its use than any child got in a village school.

Christina would have been happy to open the window without the bribe of Dick's kisses. A couple of years older than any of the boys, she had been a chambermaid at the inn since she was thirteen. She was tired of it. Bored with it to the point of being willing to assume some risk if that risk brought along a chance to do something else. Like join a troupe of traveling players, perhaps.

She was waiting for them in the early dawn, giggling a little. Her brown eyes were dancing. She led them down a set of back stairs, but not into the tavern kitchen, which was already bustling with activities that involved boiling, frying, and fricasseeing. Instead, because the tavern consisted of two originally separate buildings that had been combined in a remodeling, they went through a storage pantry, up a similar set of back stairs on the other side, and down a hall. The door looked like any other door. It didn't open into a bedchamber, though.

"See."

A well-run inn clearly required a very large supply of bed linens. A room full of them, stacked neatly on shelves. None of the boys had ever seen so many all in one place.

"I can't stay. I have to put the key back before the mistress realizes that I snitched it. She always leaves the key ring on the door handle for a while in the morning so the housekeeper can get things without disturbing her while she is casting the accounts. Don't stay in here. The housekeeper will be locking it and unlocking it all morning. Look."

Clearly, the linen closet had once been the bedchamber of some wealthy Bamberg burgher. A couple of centuries before. A burgher wealthy enough to provide himself with a privy. A privy with a nice hole in the floor. A hole that, as a result of some remodeling, was now blocked off by the ceiling of the room below.

A ceiling in which Christina, at Dick's behest, had drilled a much smaller hole.

The hand-held drill was courtesy of Mike Mundell. Putting up and pulling down stage sets required a troupe of actors to have a pretty comprehensive set of tools. Since his dad was working in Nürnberg, he'd brought along everything in the basement except what his mom said she absolutely had to keep if the house wasn't going to fall down around their heads.

The first requirement that they had to meet for successful spying was that all four of them must be absolutely quiet for three or four hours. This was harder than they had expected, since after they were in place, it occurred to them that they had not decided in advance which one would get to drape his body across the old privy and put his ear to the hole in the ceiling. Melchior naturally thought that he should, since it was his primary concern and he had suggested the idea in the first place. Dick was of the opinion that for services rendered, he should have the honor. This led to some scuffling until Otto reminded them that they were supposed to hold still and be quiet. While this was going on, Tom slid down through the privy opening and spread-eagled himself upon the ceiling beams below in such a way that they could not pull him back up. Not, at least, without causing a lot of noise and destroying the entire enterprise.

The others had to recognize Tom as the winner by default. Not without thinking of various forms of reprisal to be administered at some future date.

The CoC members arrived, as did Master Massinger. The meeting, duly eavesdropped upon, took place. The four boys above remained still. So still that the mice who resided in the ceiling and were quite used to voices and movements from the room below ventured out upon their ordinary business. One, young and not yet wise in the ways of the world, ran up the back of Tom's neck and across his face. He twitched, jerked, and part of his lower body slipped off the beam onto the wattle-and-daub that filled the spaces between the beams. A shower of shattered plaster and dried-out twigs, accompanied by a few half-grown mice, landed in the middle of the CoC meeting.

Tom managed to hold onto the beam. Only one of his legs protruded through the ceiling.

This proved to be enough to grasp the attention of the people seated in the room below.

Before any member of the Bamberg CoC decided to do anything rash, Philip Massinger, a tone of deepest resignation permeating his voice, admonished, "Come on down."

Tom slid over, grabbed the beam with his hands, swung his legs off it, and lightly dropped the remaining two feet onto the table beneath him.

"I can't let Tom go down there by himself. The whole thing, the whole idea, was my fault." Melchior slid down into the ceiling space and swung himself after Tom. Prudently looking to be sure that Tom was out of the way first.

"If these two were up there," Massinger said to the leader of the CoC group, "then there are two more." He looked up. "Dick. Otto. Now."

The other two entered the meeting by the same method, which meant that they all arrived covered with plaster dust and mouse droppings. Massinger looked at them disapprovingly. "As the index tells us the contents of stories and directs to the particular chapter, even so does the outward habit and superficial order of garments (in man or woman) give us a taste of the spirit, and demonstratively point (as it were a manual note from the margin) all the internal quality of the soul; and there cannot be a more evident, palpable, gross manifestation of poor, degenerate, dunghilly blood and breeding than a rude, unpolished, disordered, and slovenly outside."

"Yes, sir," Tom replied.

"We're sorry, sir," Dick added.

"Moreover, perhaps you should have taken to heart the maxim that the over curious are not over wise."

"Don't blame Tom and Dick. The whole thing, the whole idea, was my fault." Melchior stepped forward, prepared to shoulder the blame. "But I'm not going to apologize until I know what happened. Tom, what did you hear while you were listening."

Tom looked from Melchior to Master Massinger to the CoC members. Then, finally, back to Melchior. "You were right. At least, they're still trying to make him change the play to suit them better. None of them threatened him this time, but they have a whole list of stuff that they want him to put in to make them look better. Such as having the men in the chorus be CoC members instead of Jaeger."

Massinger opened his mouth.

One of the other men raised his bushy eyebrows before Massinger could get any words out. "Don't I know you? From somewhere?"

"I'm Melchior Kronacher. Frau Else's son."

That information landed on the chairman of the Bamberg Committee of Correspondence, also since the previous autumn the chairman of the Bamberg city council, like a large blob of unbaked bread dough.

"Ah, yes. We all know Frau Else. Could you provide me with further information in regard to 'threatening' and 'this time'?"

The boys could. And did.

"We—we actors—know that we are foreigners, of course," Dick summed it up. "We are here at your sufferance and pleasure. You—the government of Bamberg, which is now the Committee of Correspondence for all practical purposes—can forbid us to play. You can tell us what to play. By looking away, you can permit the destruction of all our sets and costumes by the city mob. By saying a few words, you can encourage the mob."

"But you're not supposed to." Melchior's voice rang with disillusionment. "You're supposed to be making things better. Better than the old city council and the way it treated Willard Thornton and Johnnie F. last fall."

The bushy eyebrows came down. Then went up again. "Herr Massinger, if I might speak with you privately for a moment. If privacy is to be found in this tavern, that is . . ." A few moments later, in the innkeeper's own cubbyhole, he asked, "What do you make of it?"

"Ah, young Melchior. The soul is strong that trusts in goodness. Yes. There was an earlier meeting—at which threats were uttered."

"Thank you. Although you have spoken no names, I observed the direction in which your eyes moved, almost against your will. Like a rough orator, that brings more truth than rhetoric, to make good his accusation."

"In my profession, I would hope to have the rhetoric as well."

****

For the entire length of their walk back to the print shop, Melchior continued to make it plain how unhappy he was that Herr Massinger had not made any grandiose statements of principle in opposition to the imposition of censorship.

"Young man . . ." Massinger began. "Ah, well. You are no apprentice of mine. I cannot ream you out. I shall leave that to your master."

"Don't have one."

"Then to your father."

"He's dead."

"Then, I suppose, to the redoubtable Frau Else. But a few words of wisdom I will give you. We have the word of the good chairman that there will be no more threats. That we may play Franconia! as it is written now, with no further changes required, and with no . . . excessive supervision . . . of any changes that may be necessary to render the cabaret . . . current, shall we say? topical? . . . as time passes. There is no need for me to posture; no need to require that the CoC officers publicly abase themselves with apologies. For a flying foe, discreet and provident conquerors build up a bridge of gold."

****

"Since we are the ones who are putting the scripts into type," Otto suggested, "Maybe in a few places we could have the chorus consist of the Ewe's fine, strapping, sons. They might not notice until it was too late."

Melchior looked at him.

"Just teasing."

****

"We never planned on staying in Bamberg so long." It was a month later and Mistress Antonia was fretting over the bookkeeping. More precisely, over the bottom line. There were only so many people in the city, and of those, only so many attended plays.

"This is no prudent time to leave. The rebellion makes the roads between here and Bayreuth very chancy."

"Then you will simply have to write a new play, Philip. This week. If we are not all to be reduced to beggary."

"Unlikely, since once more the members of the 'American colony' have been kind enough to house and feed us."

"But we need to leave appropriate gifts when we finally can go. We can't leave without acknowledging such generous hospitality."

"We can. It would merely be discourteous."

****

"Who is this famous Herr Eddie you keep quoting, anyway?" Tom asked. "And where is he?"

"Eddie Junker. From Grantville. He's a down-timer from somewhere in Thuringia, I guess, but everybody thinks of him as coming from Grantville. He's been teaching us English since . . . oh, about ...