Post by Lorpius Prime on Apr 14, 2008 1:55:58 GMT -5
The city of Munich was both dazzlingly beautiful and soul-chillingly frightful. Jay had been there only once before and the effect seemed to have become much more powerful since. So long as one kept one’s eyes up at a slight angle so that all one saw were the endless fields of intricate and magnificent church spires and gothic towers, one could not help but bask in the city’s majesty. But allow one’s gaze to dip even slightly, and it immediately became clear that most of the impressive architecture was abandoned, looming dark and empty. The wide avenues were pockmarked by sandbagged machine-gun nests. Hardly a citizen walked among them, files of uniformed soldiers marched in their stead.
At the city’s peak, just over a century ago, Munich’s population had numbered in the millions. Barely half of one million still remained, and that number continued to dwindle as the formerly thriving capital was throttled by its occupiers.
No monarch sat in the city’s palaces, despite claims from the Wettin Kings of Saxony. Nor was there any parliament or governor or even mayor of the city. None had sat since Ludwig’s ministers were shot during the sack of 1886. Now Munich, and nominally all of Bavaria, was ruled by Prussian and Holy Roman military authorities at the behest of Britain.
Theodore led Jay on a winding course through alleys and around checkpoints as they made their way towards the city-center. More than once they passed through a boarded-up building and had to step over dismal vagabonds with grey skin and greyer tattered clothing. Jay was glad Theodore had permitted him to follow. Alone, he would have been tripped up and arrested at the first checkpoint. Following the young German, it was simply a matter of avoiding the attention of any passing soldiers as they made their way from one building or blind alley to the next.
That became more difficult as they neared the city center. More of the buildings they passed were still occupied by legitimate businesses or inhabitants. The security was better, too. At one point Theodore stopped Jay before they could emerge onto the next street, and they had to backtrack several blocks to detour around a new checkpoint.
“Where are we going?” Jay asked, keeping his head down and muttering, trying to blend in with the other locals.
“The Nationaltheater is on the square ahead.” They passed diagonally through a well-manicured public garden. Jay tried very hard not to look at the soldiers in the middle who were smoking cigarettes behind a pair of machine guns. He couldn’t remember there being quite so many of those the last time he had been here. He didn’t want to think about what must have happened for them to be here now.
There were more ordinary people walking around here, which helped their camouflage tremendously. The core of the city, at least, was still kept alive and even somewhat thriving by the patronage of its occupiers.
Jay and Theodore were outside a sort of palace complex with many ornately-designed and broad structures. Theodore led him up the steps and between the massive stone columns at the entrance of one of the buildings. It suddenly became apparent to Jay that their camouflage might not be so perfect after all. They were by far the worst-dressed of all the people milling about the entrance to that building. Still, buried in a crowd of aristocratic costumes, they managed to get by the two bored-looking soldiers of the Holy Roman Empire standing sentry over the entrance.
Theodore’s mood brightened as soon as they crossed into the entry hall. He bounced over towards a ticket counter; Jay plodded after him more slowly, taking in his surroundings. He had not been in as many theaters over the course of his life as he probably could have, and this was certainly the largest of them. But Jay decided he hated the decorating scheme, or at least that of the entry hall. There was hardly any color; everything was various shades of white, yellow, and brown. And the yellow light from the enormous hanging chandeliers glared off of too-shiny walls and pillars.
He was just starting to imagine ways to improve the appearance when Theodore grabbed him by the shoulder.
“We are lucky. We caught it during an intermission; the third act is set to begin shortly. Stairs!”
Too many stairs. Jay wasn’t exactly winded by the time he had followed Theodore up three flights of stairs at a jog, but he was definitely breathing heavily. An usher in a gold-buttoned red jacket positioned himself not-so-subtly to impede their progress. Theodore held out a pair of tickets. The usher raised an eyebrow, but accepted the token of passage, handing the tickets back to Theodore and gesturing with a white-gloved hand around the curve of the hallway. Theodore again dragged Jay away at a half-run.
Their seats were in a private box: a fourth-tier, stage-right balcony with only four chairs directly overlooking the orchestra pit. Jay was impressed. But more importantly, he was now truly out of breath, and he collapsed into one of the seats.
Theodore laughed, “You may relax, we have the seats to ourselves. Remain here; I am going to see if I can find some of my associates, and a water closet, I think. I shall return soon.” And then he disappeared, leaving Jay bewildered and terrified despite the injunction to relax.
He stared out the doorway into the empty hall for a minute, then shook his head, trying to clear it. Once he’d caught his breath, he peered around the inside of the auditorium. At least it was more pleasant to look at than the hall; here the designers had chosen red velvet over white paint. Jay leaned over the balcony to look down. The curtains obscured the stage, but Jay could already tell that the odd angle was going to cause his neck to hurt watching the performance.
Jay blinked. The Orchestra Pit was empty. Completely empty, he could see the black-painted wood floorboards. It was a strange Opera that would move the entire orchestra, chairs and sheet music and all, out of the pit between acts. Jay wondered if the performance simply didn’t have any musical accompaniment. He rather hoped not.
Folding his arms over and setting his chin on the balcony, Jay scanned the audience. Most of them seemed to have filtered back into their seats now, just a few stragglers still trickling through the doors. All of them were dressed for the occasion too. By comparison to them, Jay looked like a street beggar. Actually, Jay glanced at his soiled and still somewhat soggy attire, even compared to his ordinary work dress he looked like a street beggar.
But most of the other attendees were, in Jay’s humble opinion, overdoing it, especially the women. Something more than half of the men in the auditorium were military officers in dress uniform, so at least they didn’t have much choice in which fancy getup they wore. Some of the dresses worn by their female companions, however… Jay sighed.
He had once had an interesting lunch conversation with one of the fashion critics for The Times’ Social section. Ralph had been trying in vain to get his editor to let him publish his pseudo-psychological analysis of modern fashion trends; something about the way people liked to rebel against social dress standards while still maintaining the rudimentary appearance and styles of “acceptable” clothing. At the time, Jay had been much more concerned by the sliced pickles the waitress at the café had allowed to be put on his sandwich despite his explicit request, but now he couldn’t help but think that Ralph probably had a point, whatever it was. A British Army officer, one of the bare handful stationed in Munich, walked through the second-level doors with a girl hanging on each arm. Jay winced at their necklines.
The gas lights in the auditorium began to dim and Jay shifted his gaze back to the stage as the curtains began to draw open. Still no sign of an orchestra; false smoke began to pour out from the stage and gathered as a fog in the pit. Jay squinted, trying to make out what was going on upon the stage while his eyes adjusted to the changing light.
Every cello and every woodwind of every orchestra of the world sounded at once and blasted Jay off of his seat.
In truth, the sound wasn’t quite that loud, merely deep and rich; and its sudden outburst caught Jay, who was not expecting any music at all, completely off guard. Still, the result was that Jay landed in a heap on top of his chair and another he grabbed at on his way down.
Some good did come out of the unfortunate situation, Jay thought as he picked himself back up, a humbled man. He recognized the song, and the opera to which it belonged. Indeed, it was the last opera he’d seen, back in Visby before traveling to Denmark on his previous assignment. The stage there had been open-air with much poorer quality sound and seating, but there was no mistaking that leitmotif.
Just to be absolutely certain, Jay resumed his seat and peered down at the stage. Sure enough, about a dozen of what he was sure were Munich’s best actors were strewn about engaged in stunning portrayals of corpses. A woman in a white gown walked among them, somehow managing to avoid tripping on the golden hair which hung down nearly to her ankles.
It was grossly unfair, Jay thought, that this particular opera seemed to have become so popular in the last few years. He could count all the times he had been to an opera on the fingers of his hands, and this was the second time he would see this one in two months, and the third overall. His other experience had been when he was still working as a local reporter for The Times, he had gone home to see a performance by Margaret’s theater troupe at school.
The woman on stage picking her way through the bodies was Holy Roman Empress Maria Amalia. Margaret had apparently been upset when she wasn’t chosen for the heroine’s part; although Jay thought she had been much better suited to her role as the wicked Archduchess Maria Theresa. Jay thought she was entirely too fond of the faux gilded mace she had used as a prop and kept after the production.
The music softened and slowed as Maria Amalia finished her tour of the carnage so that she could begin to mourn her missing husband, Emperor Charles Albert. Jay put his elbows on the balcony again and leaned forward lazily to watch the actress as she sang.
He couldn’t understand her words, of course, as the performance was in the original German. She was by far the best singer he had heard in the part, leagues beyond Margaret’s friend Robin or even the Swedish actress in Visby. Despite the language barrier, Jay could understand her song; it wasn’t just that he knew the broad outlines of the plot, he could feel what she meant, could sense exactly the sorrow, the loss, the fear her character was experiencing. Jay corrected his earlier assessment; this woman was the best singer he had ever heard at all.
Without being consciously aware of it, Jay nudged his chair forward so he could better see the woman as she performed. She was rather attractive; he realized and flushed slightly in embarrassment. Not in the tawdry manner of some of the women watching her. Instead she had a much more natural and refined beauty, one which her simple gown accentuated but did not attempt to exaggerate. She glowed under the stage lamps, and Jay smiled as he imagined that he could feel the same warmth.
She turned to address a handmaiden coming to inform her about the Hungarians’ rape of Munich. As she spun, her gown twisted and expanded so that it appeared like the petals of a flower. Jay stood up so that he could see at a better angle. For all the appearance of luxury, the box was not all that well designed to provide a good view of the stage.
The music started to pick up again, and the Empress’ voice melded perfectly with the notes. Jay still wasn’t sure where the orchestra was playing, since the pit beneath him remained empty, but he wasn’t all that concerned. Maria Amalia and her handmaiden moved towards the side of the stage to clear the way for the rest of the act. Frustrated still by the poor view he had at his distance, Jay leaned over the balcony.
A hand grabbed him by the back of his coat and pulled Jay back towards his seat.
“Careful, Mr. Blake,” Theodore cautioned him.
Jay blinked as his feet connected with the floor again. He hadn’t realized he had climbed that far from the box. He gulped. Nor that he had been that close to falling.
“Are you enjoying the Opera, then?” Theodore asked as he pulled up a chair and Jay settled back into his own.
“I’m… it’s… yes,” Jay was having trouble looking away from the stage even as he spoke to Theodore. “She has a marvelous singing voice.”
Theodore nodded, “Yes she does, I am sorry about that.”
“Huh?”
“I did not mean to take so long. My associates were unavailable.”
Jay had actually forgotten why his companion had brought him here. “Oh,” he said, “well don’t worry about it. I have been enjoying myself.”
“Have you seen Der letzte Kaiser before?” Theodore raised an eyebrow.
“Third time,” Jay held up his left hand to show the appropriate number of fingers.
“Ah, so you do have some culture after all,” he leaned back in his seat. “Actually, I am surprised that they allow it to be shown at all.”
Jay wasn’t so intensely focused on the stage now that the heroine had departed and been replaced by the Archduchess in her black robes.
“Who?” he asked. “The Hungarians?”
“Or your government. It is not exactly flattering to either.”
Jay shrugged, “It’s a classic.”
“It is propaganda,” Theodore snorted. Then he shrugged and chuckled slightly, “Propaganda with which I may sympathize a great deal, but propaganda nonetheless. The author crafted his characters in this… exaggerated manner for a reason,” he waved his hand at the stage where the Archduchess was swinging her mace and demanding that her servants bring her the body of Emperor Charles.
“Oh?” Jay rolled his eyes, “told you that himself did he?”
Theodore just looked at him. The gaze made Jay uncomfortable, and he looked away to watch the stage again.
They watched in silence for a while. Jay closed his eyes and just listened to the voices and the music. The orchestra, wherever it was, continued to play with exceptional skill even as the music slowed and strings gave way to deep and resonant horns. As he listened, Jay developed the impression that the sound was actually coming from somewhere above him, but when he opened his eyes to look about, he couldn’t see just where above that might be. He concluded that it must be the theater’s particular acoustics. The orchestra was more likely hidden somewhere behind the stage curtains.
The opera was drawing to a close. An enormous and elaborately constructed carriage was rolled onto the stage, pulled by invisible horses. The one in Margaret’s school production had been a flat piece of painted wood carried from behind. This one was, for all Jay could tell, the real thing, a blue-and-white monster of a carriage which might have been taken right off the grounds of a Munich palace. There was even a pair of real swans sitting on the roof, stuffed Jay was sure.
The woman playing Maria Amalia performed one last song before making her escape in the ghostly contraption. Jay was quite certain she had the most beautiful voice he had ever heard, but he sat on his hands and managed not to leap over the balcony for a better view.
The carriage withdrew offstage, carrying its charge to whatever netherworld served as the refuge of the beautiful, tragic heroines of history. The curtains fell shut to the last dramatic strains of the music and the audience’s applause.
Jay clapped until his palms hurt, and a little more after.
“So what do we do now?” he asked Theodore, who was applauding politely though with slightly less enthusiasm.
“We will wait a few minutes for the crowd to subside before we meet the others,” Theodore answered. He stood up and stretched, yawning a little before sitting back down.
Jay kept his seat, but waited nervously. He wondered how long they could remain where they were before an usher asked them to leave, or got suspicious. It was needless worry, though; they lingered for less than ten minutes before Theodore got up to leave the little box.
Despite their allowance, they still had to pick their way through a dense crowd of loiterers in the theater’s main hallways. Jay felt decidedly uncomfortable dressed as he was brushing up against so many aristocrats in their best clothes, sipping wine from fancy glasses. Jay blinked and looked again at the small group of people drinking and speaking in a language he couldn’t understand; for the life of him he couldn’t figure out where they had gotten the wine, unless they had brought it with them, there wasn’t a bar in sight.
Looking over his shoulder, Jay was only following Theodore out of the corner of his eye. This proved to be a serious error in judgement when he nearly bowled someone over. Jay stumbled, but managed to recover and even catch the shrieking woman he had smacked into before she lost her balance and fell too.
Jay was already cursing himself in his mind, but he quickly flushed scarlet when he got a good look at the poor woman, and realized he had seen her before. A man wearing the uniform of a Brigadier in the British Army quickly took the girl out of Jay’s hand.
“Well, I never--!” she huffed, straightening out her rather revealing dress while the British officer fawned over her.
“Terribly sorry—I’m—sorry—“ Jay stuttered. Both the Brigadier and the other similarly-dressed woman on the other side of him gave Jay dirty looks while the one he’d knocked down tried to get her skirts in order.
Jay just stood there, jaw open, staring, thinking he was just going to die on the spot. Fortunately, Theodore emerged out of the crowd once more and, grabbing Jay by the arm, dragged him hastily away.
“Sorry,” Jay said again, weakly, as he fled.
“—think he got mud on me!” was the only response which drifted back as the embarrassing scene was swallowed up by the crowd.
Jay’s ears were burning as he turned to Theodore. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that. I… oh my God.”
Theodore only shook his head and chuckled.
They turned a corner at one end of the grand hall and passed through a pair of open doors, and the crowd was gone. The lighting was different, too, plain and functional rather than ostentatious and decorative. A couple of men who looked like they worked for the theater were carrying some equipment, a ladder and cabling of some sort, through some side doors. Jay and Theodore stopped to let them pass before carrying on. The workers didn’t give them a second glance, so Jay supposed the area they were in wasn’t exactly off-limits, even if they were the only guests.
They walked down the corridor, which curved slightly to the right, running around behind the stage, Jay guessed. He couldn’t understand any of the markings on the various doors which led off to the side. Theodore seemed to be counting them, however, and he motioned for Jay to stop before pushing his way through a white-painted door. The room on the other side was darker than the corridor, and Jay followed cautiously.
His heart very nearly stopped. Theodore was standing just beyond the doorway, so Jay could only look over his shoulder, but he could still over the shorter man well enough. Theodore had led him into one of the theater’s dressing rooms. Sitting on a stool at the far side in front of an enormous mirror was the gorgeous fair-headed actress whom Jay had been watching on stage as Maria Amalia just a few minutes ago.
She turned on her stool to look at the intruders, and grinned at what she saw.
“Theodore!” she stood up off the stool and held out her arms.
“Lore!” the young German laughed, and Jay watched him cross the distance between them in two leaps. They embraced while Jay just looked on waiting for someone to explain what was going on. He stepped the rest of the way through the door to allow it to swing closed behind him.
Because Theodore had preceded him, Jay had not been able to see the fourth person in the room. But now that he had crossed the threshold, Jay realized that the actress he had been admiring had a sentry at her door, and a formidable one at that.
The man who stopped Jay would charitably be described as very large. Jay, who was too shocked to feel very charitable, would have called him a giant. He was easily seven feet tall, probably closer to eight. He was also wider across than both Jay and Theodore would have been standing next to each other. Part of that might have been an illusion created by his outfit, however. He was completely covered by a heavy robe and hood which prevented Jay from even seeing his face. Actually, Jay realized he couldn’t even be certain that the figure was male.
Whatever its sex, the hooded guardian placed a hand on Jay’s shoulder to stop him from proceeding any further after Theodore. The fingers were bony and dug into Jay’s flesh even through his overcoat. Jay stopped and stared at it, trying to comprehend the sentry’s enormous size.
“Richard!” a woman’s voice snapped. Jay looked over his shoulder to see that it was the actress, pointing a commanding finger over the top of Theodore’s head. “Lass ihn gehen.”
The giant released its grip on Jay’s shoulder and even took a step back. Jay blinked, unnerved by the experience, although if its name was Richard, at least that answered the question of sex.
Jay looked between Richard the giant and Theodore and the actress, not sure which way he should face. He didn’t feel very comfortable turning his back on the enormous guard; he could still feel the sharp imprint of its fingers in his skin. Theodore didn’t seem concerned though, as he turned back around and smiled.
He cleared his throat, “Ah, Lore,” he pronounced it like Laura, “this is Mr. Jay Thomson Blake of The Times of London.” That did it for Jay; he turned to give the actress a little bow, feeling slightly too warm as his ears began to turn red again.
Theodore nodded, “And, Mr. Blake, allow me to introduce Eleonore,” he held out a hand to the woman, who smiled brilliantly, “Swan Queen and Consort to King Ludwig.”
If he somehow survived all of this, Jay thought the whole thing would probably make a rather nice book someday.
At the city’s peak, just over a century ago, Munich’s population had numbered in the millions. Barely half of one million still remained, and that number continued to dwindle as the formerly thriving capital was throttled by its occupiers.
No monarch sat in the city’s palaces, despite claims from the Wettin Kings of Saxony. Nor was there any parliament or governor or even mayor of the city. None had sat since Ludwig’s ministers were shot during the sack of 1886. Now Munich, and nominally all of Bavaria, was ruled by Prussian and Holy Roman military authorities at the behest of Britain.
Theodore led Jay on a winding course through alleys and around checkpoints as they made their way towards the city-center. More than once they passed through a boarded-up building and had to step over dismal vagabonds with grey skin and greyer tattered clothing. Jay was glad Theodore had permitted him to follow. Alone, he would have been tripped up and arrested at the first checkpoint. Following the young German, it was simply a matter of avoiding the attention of any passing soldiers as they made their way from one building or blind alley to the next.
That became more difficult as they neared the city center. More of the buildings they passed were still occupied by legitimate businesses or inhabitants. The security was better, too. At one point Theodore stopped Jay before they could emerge onto the next street, and they had to backtrack several blocks to detour around a new checkpoint.
“Where are we going?” Jay asked, keeping his head down and muttering, trying to blend in with the other locals.
“The Nationaltheater is on the square ahead.” They passed diagonally through a well-manicured public garden. Jay tried very hard not to look at the soldiers in the middle who were smoking cigarettes behind a pair of machine guns. He couldn’t remember there being quite so many of those the last time he had been here. He didn’t want to think about what must have happened for them to be here now.
There were more ordinary people walking around here, which helped their camouflage tremendously. The core of the city, at least, was still kept alive and even somewhat thriving by the patronage of its occupiers.
Jay and Theodore were outside a sort of palace complex with many ornately-designed and broad structures. Theodore led him up the steps and between the massive stone columns at the entrance of one of the buildings. It suddenly became apparent to Jay that their camouflage might not be so perfect after all. They were by far the worst-dressed of all the people milling about the entrance to that building. Still, buried in a crowd of aristocratic costumes, they managed to get by the two bored-looking soldiers of the Holy Roman Empire standing sentry over the entrance.
Theodore’s mood brightened as soon as they crossed into the entry hall. He bounced over towards a ticket counter; Jay plodded after him more slowly, taking in his surroundings. He had not been in as many theaters over the course of his life as he probably could have, and this was certainly the largest of them. But Jay decided he hated the decorating scheme, or at least that of the entry hall. There was hardly any color; everything was various shades of white, yellow, and brown. And the yellow light from the enormous hanging chandeliers glared off of too-shiny walls and pillars.
He was just starting to imagine ways to improve the appearance when Theodore grabbed him by the shoulder.
“We are lucky. We caught it during an intermission; the third act is set to begin shortly. Stairs!”
Too many stairs. Jay wasn’t exactly winded by the time he had followed Theodore up three flights of stairs at a jog, but he was definitely breathing heavily. An usher in a gold-buttoned red jacket positioned himself not-so-subtly to impede their progress. Theodore held out a pair of tickets. The usher raised an eyebrow, but accepted the token of passage, handing the tickets back to Theodore and gesturing with a white-gloved hand around the curve of the hallway. Theodore again dragged Jay away at a half-run.
Their seats were in a private box: a fourth-tier, stage-right balcony with only four chairs directly overlooking the orchestra pit. Jay was impressed. But more importantly, he was now truly out of breath, and he collapsed into one of the seats.
Theodore laughed, “You may relax, we have the seats to ourselves. Remain here; I am going to see if I can find some of my associates, and a water closet, I think. I shall return soon.” And then he disappeared, leaving Jay bewildered and terrified despite the injunction to relax.
He stared out the doorway into the empty hall for a minute, then shook his head, trying to clear it. Once he’d caught his breath, he peered around the inside of the auditorium. At least it was more pleasant to look at than the hall; here the designers had chosen red velvet over white paint. Jay leaned over the balcony to look down. The curtains obscured the stage, but Jay could already tell that the odd angle was going to cause his neck to hurt watching the performance.
Jay blinked. The Orchestra Pit was empty. Completely empty, he could see the black-painted wood floorboards. It was a strange Opera that would move the entire orchestra, chairs and sheet music and all, out of the pit between acts. Jay wondered if the performance simply didn’t have any musical accompaniment. He rather hoped not.
Folding his arms over and setting his chin on the balcony, Jay scanned the audience. Most of them seemed to have filtered back into their seats now, just a few stragglers still trickling through the doors. All of them were dressed for the occasion too. By comparison to them, Jay looked like a street beggar. Actually, Jay glanced at his soiled and still somewhat soggy attire, even compared to his ordinary work dress he looked like a street beggar.
But most of the other attendees were, in Jay’s humble opinion, overdoing it, especially the women. Something more than half of the men in the auditorium were military officers in dress uniform, so at least they didn’t have much choice in which fancy getup they wore. Some of the dresses worn by their female companions, however… Jay sighed.
He had once had an interesting lunch conversation with one of the fashion critics for The Times’ Social section. Ralph had been trying in vain to get his editor to let him publish his pseudo-psychological analysis of modern fashion trends; something about the way people liked to rebel against social dress standards while still maintaining the rudimentary appearance and styles of “acceptable” clothing. At the time, Jay had been much more concerned by the sliced pickles the waitress at the café had allowed to be put on his sandwich despite his explicit request, but now he couldn’t help but think that Ralph probably had a point, whatever it was. A British Army officer, one of the bare handful stationed in Munich, walked through the second-level doors with a girl hanging on each arm. Jay winced at their necklines.
The gas lights in the auditorium began to dim and Jay shifted his gaze back to the stage as the curtains began to draw open. Still no sign of an orchestra; false smoke began to pour out from the stage and gathered as a fog in the pit. Jay squinted, trying to make out what was going on upon the stage while his eyes adjusted to the changing light.
Every cello and every woodwind of every orchestra of the world sounded at once and blasted Jay off of his seat.
In truth, the sound wasn’t quite that loud, merely deep and rich; and its sudden outburst caught Jay, who was not expecting any music at all, completely off guard. Still, the result was that Jay landed in a heap on top of his chair and another he grabbed at on his way down.
Some good did come out of the unfortunate situation, Jay thought as he picked himself back up, a humbled man. He recognized the song, and the opera to which it belonged. Indeed, it was the last opera he’d seen, back in Visby before traveling to Denmark on his previous assignment. The stage there had been open-air with much poorer quality sound and seating, but there was no mistaking that leitmotif.
Just to be absolutely certain, Jay resumed his seat and peered down at the stage. Sure enough, about a dozen of what he was sure were Munich’s best actors were strewn about engaged in stunning portrayals of corpses. A woman in a white gown walked among them, somehow managing to avoid tripping on the golden hair which hung down nearly to her ankles.
It was grossly unfair, Jay thought, that this particular opera seemed to have become so popular in the last few years. He could count all the times he had been to an opera on the fingers of his hands, and this was the second time he would see this one in two months, and the third overall. His other experience had been when he was still working as a local reporter for The Times, he had gone home to see a performance by Margaret’s theater troupe at school.
The woman on stage picking her way through the bodies was Holy Roman Empress Maria Amalia. Margaret had apparently been upset when she wasn’t chosen for the heroine’s part; although Jay thought she had been much better suited to her role as the wicked Archduchess Maria Theresa. Jay thought she was entirely too fond of the faux gilded mace she had used as a prop and kept after the production.
The music softened and slowed as Maria Amalia finished her tour of the carnage so that she could begin to mourn her missing husband, Emperor Charles Albert. Jay put his elbows on the balcony again and leaned forward lazily to watch the actress as she sang.
He couldn’t understand her words, of course, as the performance was in the original German. She was by far the best singer he had heard in the part, leagues beyond Margaret’s friend Robin or even the Swedish actress in Visby. Despite the language barrier, Jay could understand her song; it wasn’t just that he knew the broad outlines of the plot, he could feel what she meant, could sense exactly the sorrow, the loss, the fear her character was experiencing. Jay corrected his earlier assessment; this woman was the best singer he had ever heard at all.
Without being consciously aware of it, Jay nudged his chair forward so he could better see the woman as she performed. She was rather attractive; he realized and flushed slightly in embarrassment. Not in the tawdry manner of some of the women watching her. Instead she had a much more natural and refined beauty, one which her simple gown accentuated but did not attempt to exaggerate. She glowed under the stage lamps, and Jay smiled as he imagined that he could feel the same warmth.
She turned to address a handmaiden coming to inform her about the Hungarians’ rape of Munich. As she spun, her gown twisted and expanded so that it appeared like the petals of a flower. Jay stood up so that he could see at a better angle. For all the appearance of luxury, the box was not all that well designed to provide a good view of the stage.
The music started to pick up again, and the Empress’ voice melded perfectly with the notes. Jay still wasn’t sure where the orchestra was playing, since the pit beneath him remained empty, but he wasn’t all that concerned. Maria Amalia and her handmaiden moved towards the side of the stage to clear the way for the rest of the act. Frustrated still by the poor view he had at his distance, Jay leaned over the balcony.
A hand grabbed him by the back of his coat and pulled Jay back towards his seat.
“Careful, Mr. Blake,” Theodore cautioned him.
Jay blinked as his feet connected with the floor again. He hadn’t realized he had climbed that far from the box. He gulped. Nor that he had been that close to falling.
“Are you enjoying the Opera, then?” Theodore asked as he pulled up a chair and Jay settled back into his own.
“I’m… it’s… yes,” Jay was having trouble looking away from the stage even as he spoke to Theodore. “She has a marvelous singing voice.”
Theodore nodded, “Yes she does, I am sorry about that.”
“Huh?”
“I did not mean to take so long. My associates were unavailable.”
Jay had actually forgotten why his companion had brought him here. “Oh,” he said, “well don’t worry about it. I have been enjoying myself.”
“Have you seen Der letzte Kaiser before?” Theodore raised an eyebrow.
“Third time,” Jay held up his left hand to show the appropriate number of fingers.
“Ah, so you do have some culture after all,” he leaned back in his seat. “Actually, I am surprised that they allow it to be shown at all.”
Jay wasn’t so intensely focused on the stage now that the heroine had departed and been replaced by the Archduchess in her black robes.
“Who?” he asked. “The Hungarians?”
“Or your government. It is not exactly flattering to either.”
Jay shrugged, “It’s a classic.”
“It is propaganda,” Theodore snorted. Then he shrugged and chuckled slightly, “Propaganda with which I may sympathize a great deal, but propaganda nonetheless. The author crafted his characters in this… exaggerated manner for a reason,” he waved his hand at the stage where the Archduchess was swinging her mace and demanding that her servants bring her the body of Emperor Charles.
“Oh?” Jay rolled his eyes, “told you that himself did he?”
Theodore just looked at him. The gaze made Jay uncomfortable, and he looked away to watch the stage again.
They watched in silence for a while. Jay closed his eyes and just listened to the voices and the music. The orchestra, wherever it was, continued to play with exceptional skill even as the music slowed and strings gave way to deep and resonant horns. As he listened, Jay developed the impression that the sound was actually coming from somewhere above him, but when he opened his eyes to look about, he couldn’t see just where above that might be. He concluded that it must be the theater’s particular acoustics. The orchestra was more likely hidden somewhere behind the stage curtains.
The opera was drawing to a close. An enormous and elaborately constructed carriage was rolled onto the stage, pulled by invisible horses. The one in Margaret’s school production had been a flat piece of painted wood carried from behind. This one was, for all Jay could tell, the real thing, a blue-and-white monster of a carriage which might have been taken right off the grounds of a Munich palace. There was even a pair of real swans sitting on the roof, stuffed Jay was sure.
The woman playing Maria Amalia performed one last song before making her escape in the ghostly contraption. Jay was quite certain she had the most beautiful voice he had ever heard, but he sat on his hands and managed not to leap over the balcony for a better view.
The carriage withdrew offstage, carrying its charge to whatever netherworld served as the refuge of the beautiful, tragic heroines of history. The curtains fell shut to the last dramatic strains of the music and the audience’s applause.
Jay clapped until his palms hurt, and a little more after.
“So what do we do now?” he asked Theodore, who was applauding politely though with slightly less enthusiasm.
“We will wait a few minutes for the crowd to subside before we meet the others,” Theodore answered. He stood up and stretched, yawning a little before sitting back down.
Jay kept his seat, but waited nervously. He wondered how long they could remain where they were before an usher asked them to leave, or got suspicious. It was needless worry, though; they lingered for less than ten minutes before Theodore got up to leave the little box.
Despite their allowance, they still had to pick their way through a dense crowd of loiterers in the theater’s main hallways. Jay felt decidedly uncomfortable dressed as he was brushing up against so many aristocrats in their best clothes, sipping wine from fancy glasses. Jay blinked and looked again at the small group of people drinking and speaking in a language he couldn’t understand; for the life of him he couldn’t figure out where they had gotten the wine, unless they had brought it with them, there wasn’t a bar in sight.
Looking over his shoulder, Jay was only following Theodore out of the corner of his eye. This proved to be a serious error in judgement when he nearly bowled someone over. Jay stumbled, but managed to recover and even catch the shrieking woman he had smacked into before she lost her balance and fell too.
Jay was already cursing himself in his mind, but he quickly flushed scarlet when he got a good look at the poor woman, and realized he had seen her before. A man wearing the uniform of a Brigadier in the British Army quickly took the girl out of Jay’s hand.
“Well, I never--!” she huffed, straightening out her rather revealing dress while the British officer fawned over her.
“Terribly sorry—I’m—sorry—“ Jay stuttered. Both the Brigadier and the other similarly-dressed woman on the other side of him gave Jay dirty looks while the one he’d knocked down tried to get her skirts in order.
Jay just stood there, jaw open, staring, thinking he was just going to die on the spot. Fortunately, Theodore emerged out of the crowd once more and, grabbing Jay by the arm, dragged him hastily away.
“Sorry,” Jay said again, weakly, as he fled.
“—think he got mud on me!” was the only response which drifted back as the embarrassing scene was swallowed up by the crowd.
Jay’s ears were burning as he turned to Theodore. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that. I… oh my God.”
Theodore only shook his head and chuckled.
They turned a corner at one end of the grand hall and passed through a pair of open doors, and the crowd was gone. The lighting was different, too, plain and functional rather than ostentatious and decorative. A couple of men who looked like they worked for the theater were carrying some equipment, a ladder and cabling of some sort, through some side doors. Jay and Theodore stopped to let them pass before carrying on. The workers didn’t give them a second glance, so Jay supposed the area they were in wasn’t exactly off-limits, even if they were the only guests.
They walked down the corridor, which curved slightly to the right, running around behind the stage, Jay guessed. He couldn’t understand any of the markings on the various doors which led off to the side. Theodore seemed to be counting them, however, and he motioned for Jay to stop before pushing his way through a white-painted door. The room on the other side was darker than the corridor, and Jay followed cautiously.
His heart very nearly stopped. Theodore was standing just beyond the doorway, so Jay could only look over his shoulder, but he could still over the shorter man well enough. Theodore had led him into one of the theater’s dressing rooms. Sitting on a stool at the far side in front of an enormous mirror was the gorgeous fair-headed actress whom Jay had been watching on stage as Maria Amalia just a few minutes ago.
She turned on her stool to look at the intruders, and grinned at what she saw.
“Theodore!” she stood up off the stool and held out her arms.
“Lore!” the young German laughed, and Jay watched him cross the distance between them in two leaps. They embraced while Jay just looked on waiting for someone to explain what was going on. He stepped the rest of the way through the door to allow it to swing closed behind him.
Because Theodore had preceded him, Jay had not been able to see the fourth person in the room. But now that he had crossed the threshold, Jay realized that the actress he had been admiring had a sentry at her door, and a formidable one at that.
The man who stopped Jay would charitably be described as very large. Jay, who was too shocked to feel very charitable, would have called him a giant. He was easily seven feet tall, probably closer to eight. He was also wider across than both Jay and Theodore would have been standing next to each other. Part of that might have been an illusion created by his outfit, however. He was completely covered by a heavy robe and hood which prevented Jay from even seeing his face. Actually, Jay realized he couldn’t even be certain that the figure was male.
Whatever its sex, the hooded guardian placed a hand on Jay’s shoulder to stop him from proceeding any further after Theodore. The fingers were bony and dug into Jay’s flesh even through his overcoat. Jay stopped and stared at it, trying to comprehend the sentry’s enormous size.
“Richard!” a woman’s voice snapped. Jay looked over his shoulder to see that it was the actress, pointing a commanding finger over the top of Theodore’s head. “Lass ihn gehen.”
The giant released its grip on Jay’s shoulder and even took a step back. Jay blinked, unnerved by the experience, although if its name was Richard, at least that answered the question of sex.
Jay looked between Richard the giant and Theodore and the actress, not sure which way he should face. He didn’t feel very comfortable turning his back on the enormous guard; he could still feel the sharp imprint of its fingers in his skin. Theodore didn’t seem concerned though, as he turned back around and smiled.
He cleared his throat, “Ah, Lore,” he pronounced it like Laura, “this is Mr. Jay Thomson Blake of The Times of London.” That did it for Jay; he turned to give the actress a little bow, feeling slightly too warm as his ears began to turn red again.
Theodore nodded, “And, Mr. Blake, allow me to introduce Eleonore,” he held out a hand to the woman, who smiled brilliantly, “Swan Queen and Consort to King Ludwig.”
If he somehow survived all of this, Jay thought the whole thing would probably make a rather nice book someday.