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“People usually forget about the shoes,” said the angel. “I had to use a miracle. We were in rather a rush.”
It had been a long night, and a long day before it. Doubtless this was a dream. The cobbler Sachs was no longer a young man – not yet old, not too old to dream of a sweet face near his when he woke, a warm embrace, a soft voice or the tender indignities of love; but old enough that he fell asleep over his book sometimes, when the night was cold and the fire warm.
Not, however, customarily in summer's midmorning, with the sun streaming in the window. Or was that entirely the sun? Older wives whose eyesight had begun to blur sometimes complained of the glare. It seemed far brighter than it had a moment ago.
Well, if he was going mad, it was a kinder madness than had possessed the citizens of Nuremberg the night before: there was more than one broken head in the city this morning. All he’d done was strike his last and sing in the cool of the midsummer evening – all right, he’d been doing his best to be vexatious, but if he’d forestalled a loveless marriage between the sweet girl he’d watched grow up and the vain, pedantic town clerk who wanted to take her home like a trophy, it was worth any number of broken heads.
Or a slide into delusion. Angels didn’t appear to ageing widowers with a curmudgeonly disposition, particularly not angels with fluffy white curls and kind blue eyes – rather a lot of them, it seemed, if you looked hard at the glowing ghosts of wings about the hazy figure. Were there four? no, six of them, with an eye in each feather – you could imagine they were gazing too, like the eyes of a peacock’s fan – he realized he was squinting, and shielding his own eyes with the back of one hand –
“Oh. Excuse me, forgot. Terribly sorry.”
The light dwindled, the comfortable parlour coming back into view as the air rippled and rearranged itself, and a radiance like midsummer noon’s – that would come soon enough – was replaced by the figure of a pink-cheeked, prosperous-looking, well-fed blond man. He wore breeches and a long coat of ivory velvet, with a fawn-coloured revers and slashed sleeves; sueded boots – excellently made, Sachs was one to judge – and a shirt the pale blue of a hazy sky. Clearly a customer who could afford the best.
“Your Eve will be all right,” he said. “I’ve sorted it, against orders, I know, but sometimes one must. Management doesn’t understand how things are on the ground.”
Oh. So he was still dreaming or mad. The man’s complexion was a pure porcelain that evaded even the highest nobility, and the ring on the smallest finger of one hand was clearly gold.
“I know Herr Pogner said he’d give his daughter to the Mastersinger who won the song contest, and her young man isn’t even accepted as a Master yet – headstrong boy – but they’re going to be together, and thanks to you there won’t be the dishonour of eloping or defying her father. With luck, my Head Office won’t even suspect that we – ah – I had a hand in it.”
“I did my best,” sighed Sachs, finally shutting the book in his lap – was the well-dressed man gazing at it a little covetously? That was odd. “I hoped the words of the song would make her think twice about running away.”
“Oh, it was inspired. We were – well, you could hear it simply everywhere. And you put that tiresome clerk fellow quite off balance, striking the last every time he made an error in metre or form. Dreadful pedant.”
The dream wasn’t breaking up. Well, go with it. “Local sentiment might still give Herr Beckmesser the prize, if I know these men. I won’t be singing, and he’s got a following, though I’m damned if I know why.”
“Not so damned as all that, I would imagine,” said the angel indulgently. “I'm acquainted with the genuine article. Which is how I know it’ll be all right.”
“You talk in riddles.”
The angel’s smile was – fond? “Yes. Yes, I suppose I do, Well – I meant only to reassure you, I could see how much it mattered – my orders from Heaven were quite specific, you know. Something about a descendant. They’re very interested in descendants. But – well, when two people love each other the way she and her young man do, I can’t help wanting them to be together. I suppose I’m rather a bad angel really. Anyhow, I’ve arranged for a – colleague to make sure the contest goes in the young man’s favour. I’ll say his wiles were too much for me.”
“A – colleague.”
“I’m afraid that rumpus last night was mostly down to him. He gets a bit carried away sometimes.”
“Another bad angel?”
The smile grew even more indulgent, reaching the corners of the blue eyes. “Something like that. I have his pledge that when Herr Beckmesser rises to sing, he’ll make – what did he say? A right bollocks of it.”
“Then it’ll be a better set than the one he’s got.”
The angel blushed a bit at that. “So all you need do now is make sure the young man proves he can make a Master song. If anyone can teach him, you can. There’s still time.”
He wasn’t imagining it (unless he was imagining all of it); the angel – the phantoms of wings still blurring now and again at his shoulders, a faint glow around his hair shedding light even in the shadowy corners – was perusing his bookshelf with stealthy glances, at one point stopping himself in the act of reaching out.
“How,” he said, “did you know about the shoes? Is it in one of your books? The story’s so rarely remembered.”
Sachs shook his head heavily. “It was a dream,” he said. “All poetry's the fruit of our dreams, in the end.”
“Well, it was a true one,” said the angel. “For the most part. God really only cared what I’d done with the sword. She’d already moved on from Adam and Eve, I suppose.” He finally gave in to temptation – if that was a thing you could say about an angel – and ran his finger down a leather-bound spine. “So the shoes were my own initiative. You need to rely on that in the field. It would have taken them so long to learn how to make proper ones, and the sand was hot, and there were stones. And she was expecting. It seemed needlessly harsh.”
He turned to look Sachs full in the eye. It was like being comforted by the kindest person you'd ever met, while simultaneously being chastened to awe by the most powerful person you’d ever met.
“You're doing a noble thing,” he said.
Sachs waved dismissively.
“I showed a fool that he was a fool. I’m not above petty spite. And what came of it? Brawling in the streets, everyone settling old scores, and now today they’ll pretend it never happened. Sing the guild songs, pat themselves on the back, sing our songs – my songs – never thinking how we brew them from our hearts’ grief. I still love them, though, old wittol that I am.”
“I’ve come to love them too,” said the angel. “Well, one’s meant to in general terms, of course. But – not the way we’re told to. Even when they’re foolish or wrong-headed, just as you with the young lady – that was what I meant, you know. I can tell what it costs you to give her up.”
Sachs rubbed his eyes. Maybe just because the brightness never quite abated.
“I know what it means, to see someone you love before you and stop yourself from speaking, or reaching out. For their own good.”
Sachs nodded. “She would settle for me,” he said. “Don’t think I haven’t dreamed of that.”
“I can ease the pain of it,” said the angel, extending a tentative hand. “If you’ll let me.”
Sachs hesitated. “”No,” he said at last. “Pain is what we make into song. It will linger a season, and become something other, like the black matter of the alchemists. I’ve lost a wife. We buried seven children. My songs are greater for enduring it. Not to feel the pain is to refuse the gift.”
“You’re certain.”
“Do you let anyone take your pain?”
The angel glanced away; closed his eyes. The aura around him dimmed, so that in that moment it was easy to imagine him nothing but a prosperous burgher, impeccably wardrobed, calling to enquire about new boots. Perhaps Sachs would make him a pair. This was a most thought-provoking dream.
“If it's all I'm granted?” said the angel, “From now till the end of eternity? I will still cherish it.”
“So we understand one another,” said Sachs. “I believe I hear footsteps. Perhaps I’m about to wake. Good morrow to you, Master Angel. I’ll school the boy.”
The figure began to dissolve in a blur of pale light.
“My blessing, Master Sachs.”
The meadow outside Nuremberg’s wall teemed with townspeople tricked out in their best; at the less attentive margins of the crowd, there were boisterous apprentices tussling, the tailor’s guild still laughing and making goat-noises, already two or three beers down. Crowley, mug in hand, was blending in. The black velvet of his big-sleeved coat should have been unbearably hot in the summer sun, but he was insouciant, impeccable. Perfect, as always.
“That was good work,” said Aziraphale. “What did you do exactly?”
The failed suitor Beckmesser was still expostulating to anyone who would listen about how he’d been tricked and the song wasn’t even his work, but given the complete and rather grisly incoherence of the supposed love-lyric he’d just risen to perform, no one was listening.
“Ah, just a little aphasia curse. Old Knife-Nose still doesn’t know what hit him. Reckon he’ll never nick another manuscript.”
“He certainly did make a – ahem – bollocks of it. I thought the line about devouring fruit, and wood, and horse from the tree of liver was particularly quaint. The dog that blew wavingly. And that business about being pale as a cabbage. He certainly was.”
“All the girls fall over for that, y’know.”
“He blamed it on Master Sachs.”
“Ah, y’can see how they all love him. He’ll live it down.”
“Shh, the young knight’s about to sing it properly.”
Shining in the rosy light of morning,
the air laden with blossom and scent,
full of every unthought joy,
a garden invited me
and, beneath a wondrous tree there,
richly hung with fruit,
I beheld the blessed dream of love.
Aziraphale glanced to his left, barely catching the movement that told him Crowley had only that instant looked away.
“He’s good,” Crowley murmured. “Pro’ll’y didn’t need the help.”
“I’m grateful nonetheless.”
The apprentices were silent. Even the drunkest members of the crowd refrained from breaking the hush.
The Paradise of which I had dreamed
in heavenly, new-transfigured splendour
lay bright before me,
sang the young knight,
my heart’s elect –-
If at that line two fingers twined together, no more, everyone was too rapt at the singing to notice.
They pretended not to notice it themselves.
“Fancy stayin’ for the wedding?”
“I think not. I’ve a lot of explaining to do to Gabriel. It won’t get any easier looking at it.”
“Ah, take a break. Free booze, more fightin’. Maybe even a Brautstehlen if they get drunk enough.”
“The groom’s a knight and combat-trained. I don’t think anyone would have the nerve to steal the bride even in sport. Anyway, I – well, I really must be going.”
“Suit y’r’self. Think I’ll stay and work off a few vice and gluttony assignments. They won’t care much where, specially after this one.”
“If you prefer. Just be warned, next time I shall thwart your wiles resoundingly.”
“Lookin’ forward to it.”
The smoked lenses – a quaint novelty, but on a day like this, they excited little comment – followed the small pale figure until the angel was out of sight.