Read 1636 The Devil's Opera (Ring of Fire) for Free Online Page B

copy for our files.”
    Schmidt spat again on the now-soggy newspaper, picked up his hat and started to leave. He paused in the doorway long enough to add, “And clean up that mess.”
    After the outer door slammed behind Schmidt, Stephan laid his notebook down on his own little desk in the outer room, found a scrap of towel and a box, and walked back into the master’s office. He knelt to gather the sodden newspaper scraps and place them in the box, then gingerly picked out as much of the broken glass as he could find. Finally he mopped up the spilled wine as best he could.
    After disposing of the box and its contents, Stephan straightened the chair behind the desk, neatened the contract pages where they were still open on the desktop, and generally made sure the rest of the room was in order. Then, returning to his own desk, he pulled out cheap paper to draft the letter on and a much better grade for the final copy. Every movement was precise, subdued, exact. As you’d expect from a lowly clerk who’d once made the mistake of thinking he might soar into the heights of embezzlement.
    The analogy with Icarus didn’t occur to Burckardt himself. He was a clerk born into a very modest family, not a figure from myth. Icarus had plunged to his death in the sea. Burckardt has gotten his wages lowered, his hours lengthened, his person demeaned. His prospects ruined also, of course—but they’d never been good anyway.
     
     

Chapter 6
    “No!”
    Franz Sylwester winced as Pastor Jonas Nicolai jerked back in surprise at the vehemence in Marla Linder’s voice. For all that his wife normally shone with a pleasant temperament, she had a temper that, when stirred, rivaled the tempests on the seas. Unfortunately for the pastor, he had just invoked the tempest. And, judging from his expression, the poor man had no idea what had gone wrong, but he had just enough perception to realize that something had.
    Pastor Nicolai from the Heilige Geist (Holy Ghost) church had asked if he could call on them. Franz remembered that he and Marla had looked at each other quizzically when they received the note. Neither of them knew the man, since they did not attend any of the Lutheran churches in Magdeburg, but they decided they would do the polite thing and allow the call.
    In the flesh, Pastor Nicolai proved to be somewhat urbane, and his tone had a supercilious air to it. Within five minutes of conversation Franz was wishing the man would say what he had to say and leave. Within the second five minutes it became clear that the pastor was hoping to recruit them as musicians for his church, and Franz became heartily sick of the man. Within five more, as the pastor revealed that his specific purpose was to make a pastoral and consoling visit to the bereaved family that he hoped to pull into his parish, Franz was sick to his soul and desperately seeking ways to cut the visit short.
    The stillbirth of their first child in October had put Marla on the edge of a mental precipice. It had only been a couple of weeks ago that she had been turned away from it through the help of some of their musician friends. She wouldn’t talk about it now. From conversations with Mary Simpson and Lady Beth Haygood, Franz knew that she might never talk about it. But he knew in his heart that she had spent those weeks staring into the abyss of Hell, unable to even grieve properly for their stillborn daughter Alison. And he knew that although she no longer did so directly, and although her face was alive again and her smile could be seen from time to time, she was still subject to times and days of darkness.
    And now, out of a misguided desire to comfort the bereaved parents—at least, Franz hoped it was misguided and not an intentional trespass—this idiot of a pastor had opened his mouth and spilled out the one religious doctrine common to all the reformers that he had hoped to keep from Marla until she had regained her balance.
    “Frau Linder…” Pastor Nicolai