The Grantville Gazette - Volume 4 Part 11

winking and then kissing her cheek next to her ear. She giggled and gave him a playful swat in return. On the second day after they'd arrived, she'd told him to call her "Mama" and used the familiar "du" with him.

"I don't know how you do it," Joachim sighed as they entered the room where their bath had been set up.

"Do what?"

"How you charmed Mama that way. I've never seen Papa do what you just did."

Chip shrugged and grinned. "Mostly it's confidence, then spotting her mood and having the knowledge

on how to use it. She knew I wasn't serious, just having fun. I'll bet your father knows every mood your

mother has, so it's just a matter of if he's in the mood. Now if it was just the two of them in the room . . ."

Both young men rinsed their once-sweaty s.h.i.+rts in the tub's clean warm water and hung them to dry on a piece of string stretched across the small ground floor room otherwise used as a summer kitchen. They decided their first day to alternate who should bathe first while the other waited and this time it was Chip's turn to go first.

"I want to soak a bit," Joachim remarked lazily, resting in the large wooden tub, used in the fall for wine

fermentation. "Would you tell Karla to bring in some more hot water? This has gotten just a little cool."

It wasn't that cool, Chip thought sarcastically. More likely he wanted the von Thierbach's housemaid Karla to help scrub his back. Or something. Well, it wasn't like she objected or it was a secret from his parents.

He was walking towards Karla at the end of the hallway and just as he was about to talk to her, he heard the sound of music. A violin? "What is that I'm hearing?" he asked Karla.

"Fraulein von Ruppersdorf brought her violin with her, Herr Jenkins," Karla answered politely.

"Ah. Thank you. By the way, the young Herr says the bath water is getting a little cool and specifically asked that you bring him some more hot water."

Karla wasn't fat nor was she thin; she was what Grandpa Hudson called "healthy." She was plain-faced

but when she bowed her head and blushed with a smile, she became almost attractive.

Chip followed the music to the library. Its door was closed but Chip knocked. "Come in," he heard Katerina respond.

The young brunette with striking features was sitting on a straight-backed chair with the sheet music spread on the table before her, the base of the violin tucked against her collar bone. "Oh, Herr Jenkins!"

said Joachim's second cousin, with a surprised look, her fair face flushed, a strand of black hair escaping from her bun. "I'm sorry if the errors in my playing bothered you. I try to practice only when the men are

out."

Chip smiled delightedly. "I didn't have the opportunity to be bothered, Fraulein von Ruppersdorf," he replied, delighted by her lack of composure at his appearance. "In fact, I'm a poor player myself. At least you can play the music as you read it. Everything I play, I have to struggle to read to get the notes right

first and then play by ear. I've made far too many errors to ever complain about someone else. Please continue."

He'd never heard the work she was raggedly playing and both the violin and bow looked strange to him.

The first major difference he noticed was that her violin was narrower than the one he had in his room in Jena. The bow was also significantly shorter than the one he used and it curved out, not in. The third was that her violin didn't have a chin rest and definitely no shoulder rest. And finally, the sound of the music was also softer. Gut strings, he supposed, made from young sheep gut rather than cat gut, a common misconception up-time. Hey, let's hear it for another use of lamb intestines, he mentally cheered.

Katerina stopped playing abruptly. "I am so sorry, Herr Jenkins, I simply cannot concentrate on the music this afternoon. Perhaps . . . you would care to play something that you know," she offered, lifting her violin and bow to him.

"I'm not certain," he said, taking the violin reluctantly. "There are many changes between your time and

mine to the instrument and besides, I haven't practiced since I left Grantville two months ago."

"Please," Katerina requested, her dark eyes meeting his and her lips imploring. "For me. I should like to hear a tune from your time."

Fortunately, he thought, the tuning of the strings hadn't changed in four hundred years, still in fifths, whatever that was. He tucked the violin under his chin and drew the strange bow across the strings. It sounded right but what should he play?

"This is a tune from almost a hundred fifty years before my time and was popular with both armies in our only civil war," Chip said finally. "The lyrics are of a man describing his loving relations.h.i.+p with a girl when he was a boy. They then parted and have gone different ways but he hopes to join with her after death. A soldier's song, of a man well aware that he may die before they meet again. It is called 'Lorena.'"

A couple of false starts and he launched into the tune he'd first heard as background music in a doc.u.mentary about the Civil War. His timing was off but he was able to repeat the last part of the song without a flaw and the double stop at the end came out smoothly.

"That was marvelous!" Katerina beamed, clapping her hands to Chip's slight embarra.s.sment.

It wasn't that good, Chip thought, but wasn't going to argue if she thought it was. Besides, humility

would take you only so far and he wanted his relations.h.i.+p with her to last for a long time. He didn't know if he was in love but there was certainly a fair amount of l.u.s.t involved in his thoughts about her.

"What else can you play?" she asked.

"Several things, Fraulein, but one thing that has changed between your time and mine is that we have a

chin rest on this part of the violin," he said, tapping the base side of the bottom. "Most violinists also use a shoulder rest which clamps onto the other side of the violin to hold it even higher. I'm afraid my neck would ache if I played many tunes but I will play one more.

"This one is from the same era and I play it two different ways. The first and more popular is the tune 'When Johnny Comes Marching Home,' a happy welcome for the returning soldier. The second, not so well known is, 'Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya,' the lament of a wife when she sees her husband return

missing an arm, leg and eye." Actually, the description of the returning soldier was far worse but as far as Chip knew, he had the only copy of the words and music in Grantville, something he'd picked up at a Morgantown folk music shop. He'd have to copy it someday and put it into the Grantville musical archives.

Chip launched into the merry tune and played it twice before transitioning into the second melancholy version. He played that twice and then hopped back up to the first to finish.

"Why did you go back to the first tune?" Katerina asked when he finished.

Chip smiled ruefully. "I hate to end on a sad note and besides it reminds me of how people quickly forget the damage a war can bring to the men involved. Oh, I'm sorry if what I just said brought unhappy memories back to you," he said quickly as he saw her face cloud. "Here, let me play one more tune. This one was originally played by the English to mock Americans during our war for independence but we took it and made it our own."

Chip played "Yankee Doodle" and then sang a translation of its words to her, pantomiming the

movements described in the song. Katerina laughed delightedly."Please, call me Katerina or . . . no, just Katerina and I will call you Chip as everyone else does," she said, taking her violin back from Chip and put it away with her music. "You must also say 'du' to me as well. Come, let us see what trouble Joachim is getting himself into," she said, taking his arm.

"Better yet," Chip said, his heart thumping wildly at her touch but still not forgetting about Karla, "why don't we talk with his mother? I haven't heard half the stories I should have heard about how Joachim got into trouble when he was young."

* * * "You don't have to give anyone a gift, at least not here at home," Joachim protested when Chip asked what kind of presents he should give his family.

"But they've been so nice to me, especially your mama and papa."

"Of course they have but I suspect you're thinking of my cousin." Joachim grinned. "Let those who have eyes, see," he quoted.

Chip flushed. "Perhaps a little."

"Chip, just one thing, probably unnecessary to say but she is my cousin and a n.o.ble lady, not to be

trifled with like some of the girls we know in Jena. Use her unkindly and well, our friends.h.i.+p will be at

an end," Joachim told him in all seriousness.

"Not to worry," Chip responded calmly. "I have nothing but the most honorable intentions towards her.

Well, almost," he slyly smiled to his friend. "You wouldn't blame me for trying to kiss her, would you?"

he teased. "Or if she returned it? Not that I have. Yet, anyway."

"That . . . would be different. Just remember, she's a lady, not a trollop."

"In my time, sometimes the two were hard to distinguish just looking at their cla.s.s," Chip answered.

"But Julie was . . . never mind," he abruptly ended his thought. Didn't matter now anyway.

"I have an idea, Chip. Katerina was talking about you playing the violin. Perhaps a concert before we

attend the Christmas Eve service in Thierbach would be best. We'll be staying at our house in town beginning the day before Christmas Eve. Play some tunes from your time." "A good idea." Chip grinned. "They certainly won't hear any of them this far from Grantville for years." * * *

Chip had rigged an impromptu chin rest and shoulder rest for Katerina's violin, making it possible for him to play several songs for his host family this evening. Viedel in German meant violin, no doubt where the word "fiddle" came from, he reflected, tuning it once again. Gut strings took a lot more tuning than steel wire wrapped over nylon. He'd tried the collar bone position a few times so he could sing and play at the same time, but his playing in that position was still awful.

They'd arrived in Thierbach yesterday afternoon and after dinner today he'd played a number of tunes, mostly slower ones and a few religious ones. Somehow, Santa, Rudolf and Frosty hadn't seemed appropriate. As with Katerina, he spoke the lyrics and then played the tune except for one song Joachim had helped translate into German.

As they walked to church for the Christmas Eve service, Katerina's arm on his, she asked, "Why are you bringing my violin? Is there a problem with the organ?" she lightly questioned.

"No, no, nothing like that," Chip replied, avoiding her question. "Just something I want to do." ". . . And now, a guest of the von Thierbach's, Herr Chip Jenkins, has something for us," the church's pastor said from his pulpit.

Chip walked steadily forward from the von Thierbach pew, carrying Katerina's now-unwrapped violin with him, and stepped up to the platform level below the altar. "Thank you, Herr Reverend," Chip began. "Some of you may have heard of a town of Americans from the future who suddenly appeared as if by magic not far from Rudolstadt south of Jena several months ago. I am one of them. If there was magic involved, it was not of our making. We have no explanation for it.