Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [59]
“Is this an antique?” the officer asked. Peter recognized the German language, and mostly understood it, as it was close to the Hessian tongue which he’d spoken back in the lost and ancient world of the Hesse, and which he still spoke with Bo in their current home at the Farm.
“Yes,” Peter said, in a rough approximation of the German language. “But not so old that I don’t still play it. I’m a musician, and this is the instrument I play to make my living.”
“You’ll be performing here?”
“Yes, in Hamelin. For their autumn festival and concert celebrating the Pied Piper. As you can see, I’ll be playing the Piper.”
“Ah. Well then, I hope you brought bright clothes.”
“Actually, someone else is bringing the costumes.”
“That’s fine then,” the officer said. “As long as you aren’t attempting to smuggle museum treasures.” The officer then waved Peter through the line, after wishing him a pleasant stay in Germany.
Peter breathed a sigh of relief, glad that the Customs official hadn’t requested to search his larger bag, which contained all of the deadly devices that he couldn’t bring aboard the plane in his carry-on luggage. Of course, they weren’t just dropped willy-nilly into the open bag. Each weapon was secreted in hidden pockets, behind a false bottom. Anyone who found his weapons would have to have been already suspicious enough to conduct much more than the standard random search.
Before leaving the terminal, Peter went down a flight of stairs to the ground level automobile rental kiosks, where he rented a car. His false documentation included a current international driver’s license. Then he collected his car and drove into the city, getting turned around once or twice in the crowded urban traffic.
After finally making it through the city, he drove on into the nearby Rheingau Region, where he found his hotel, the opulent five-star Schloss Reinhartshausen, situated directly on the Rhine River. Since I’m likely to die in the next few days, he thought, I might as well try my best to live it up in the meantime.
He ate dinner in the hotel restaurant that evening, where his waiter suggested the house specialty. “It’s a hunter’s stew,” the waiter said, “though it also includes lamb, which is hardly a creature one need hunt.” He laughed at his own comment.
“No, thank you,” Peter said. “I lost my appetite for any sort of stew long ago. I think I’ll try the rouladen.”
“A fine choice,” the waiter said. “We make that exceptionally well here.”
And it was good. So good in fact that Peter not only ate the rolls of tender spiced beef, but the pickles at the center of each roll, which were, strictly speaking, only intended to flavor the beef as it cooked, and not meant to be consumed themselves.
Later in his room, before retiring for the night, Peter retrieved the many weapons from their secret locations in his suitcase, and installed them into their secret locations in the suit he would be wearing the next day, for the long drive to Hamelin.
In which
Peter plays
for a king.
THE INTERIOR OF THE FORMER CHURCH WAS large and drafty. The room was circular, with vaulting archways at several stations in the curving wall, leading off to other sections of the building. Fluted columns lined the curved walls, bracing the first indented cornice overhead. Then there was another eight or nine feet of wall above that, elaborately decorated with intricate moldings and relief sculptures, depicting scenes Peter couldn’t begin to interpret. A second level of cornices supported the high domed roof, the interior of which was carved into rectangular coffers with stepped frameworks. Peter had played in many churches in the past, always with an appropriate sense of awe at being allowed inside such places.
Three or four dozen people were gathered into this chamber, which wasn’t nearly enough to fill it up. Most of them were boys, some