Well. Back to the hymnal. He’d already taught the whole “Rudiments” to Minnie. What is a lyric? What is a tune? What is pitch? Treble clef. Base clef. Whole, half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes, with how to draw them. The most frequently used times, such as 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4, with how to accent them. Rests, measures, bars; how to draw them. It was only six pages. The kid who had turned his vocal music into sheet music had acted like it was manna from heaven.
No. 35. “The Romish Lady.” Benny loved “The Romish Lady.” Political correctness had never advanced very far into the life he lived. He loved all eleven verses of it.
So, it turned out the next day, did the members of the Lutheran theological faculties of the universities of Jena, Wittenberg, and Tuebingen, with assorted associates and accompanying students.
There was a Romish lady brought up in popery,
Her mother always taught her the priest she must obey.
O pardon me dear mother, I humbly pray thee now,
For unto these false idols I can no longer bow.
Professor Osiander cast a rather apprehensive glance in the direction of the U.S. Secretary of State. Herr Piazza was known to be a Roman Catholic.
Assisted by her handmaid, a Bible she concealed,
And there she gain’d instruction, till God his love revealed.
No more she prostrates herself to pictures deck’d with gold,
But soon she was betray’d, and her Bible from her stold.
But Herr Piazza was calmly drinking his beer and grinning. “Just wait,” he said to Cavriani. “It gets better.”
As Benny proceeded through the verses, the issue of whether it got better or worse was probably a matter of interpretation. The comparatively few English speakers in the square summarized the plot development for their friends:
With grief and great vexation, her mother straight did go,
T’inform the Roman clergy the cause of all her woe.
The priests were soon assembled, and for the maid did call,
And forced her in the dungeon, to fright her soul withal.
“I’ve got to have him sing this for Spee and Heinzerling,” Piazza said to Cavriani. “In it’s own way, it’s a classic.”
Before the pope they brought her, in hopes of her return,
And there she was condem-ned in horrid flames to burn.
Before this place of torment, they brought her speedily,
With lifted hands to heaven, she then agreed to die.
“You’ve got to admit,” Ed was saying, “that it goes a long way toward explaining why two-thirds of the people in Grantville are expecting a man as civilized as Urban VIII to burn Galileo any day now. Even if they’ve never sung it themselves, their grandparents did. It’s part of their cultural heritage.”
Benny kept merrily on, as the maids-in-waiting commiserated, the victim’s gold jewelry was confiscated by the avaricious inquisitors, and the raging mother reappeared:
O take from me these idols, remove them from my sight;
Restore to me my Bible, wherein I take delight.
Alas, my aged mother, why on my ruin bent?
‘Twas you that did betray me, but I am innocent.
So the tormenters proceeded to light the fire. With her dying breath, the Romish Lady asked God to pardon the priest and the people, “and so I bid farewell.”
About ninety-nine percent of the people in the marketplace in Jena broke into a mad storm of applause. If ever there was a song with the Right Stuff, this was it.
Benny didn’t have any sheet music copies of it.
Crisis. Until Ed volunteered that if Benny would lend him the hymnal, he would take it down to the printer, stay there while he copied it off, and bring the book right back. There would be sheet music tomorrow, even if some unfortunate apprentice had to stay up with a candle all night carving out a woodcut of the musical score.
Professor Lukas Osiander, Jr., really did not understand what was happening here.
Benny segued into an encore. “Mother’s Bible” was always a good one.
As Ed headed for the printer’s, Benny’s voice called after him: “Ed, get him to copy ‘Standing on the Promises,’ too. And No. 261. ‘Deliverance Will Come.'”