Quest of Hope: A Novel (54 page)

Heinrich nodded curious.

Dietmar sighed and pulled himself to his feet. “Now, good fellow, we’ve just a few streets farther.”

The pair shuffled slowly through the narrow alleyways of Salzburg until they arrived at the young man’s modest home. There, Heinrich was offered shelter until he could secure his employment at the mines. The grateful baker accepted Dietmar’s kindness but spent the next two days doing nothing other than tending his dying friend. On the third day the landless lord handed Heinrich a few silver pennies and shrugged. “It is all, Heinrich. It is all I’ve left here. Buy some food and drink. I’ll not be calling the physicians again. The fools are stealing my money and the cause is long lost.”

“But—”

“Please … do as I say.” His voice was weak and imploring.

Heinrich left quickly, only to return with an ample provision of meats, some dried peas, a fresh chicken for a good soup, and a flask of red wine. He also dragged in a canvas bag filled with firewood and a pouch of precious salt. “Now, Dietmar, sit by this better fire and warm your bones! I shall cook you a soup you’ll not soon forget and we’ll dress this wound.”

Tears rolled down Dietmar’s gaunt face as he huddled close to the fire. He poured a tall, clay goblet of wine with a trembling hand and smiled. “Thanks be to God for you, friend.” He knew Heinrich had dipped a heavy hand into his own bag of pennies to bring a bit of cheer and hope to a dying man. “Heinrich,” he began in a weakening voice, “I am but a young man … but raised by a wise one. He once told me …” Dietmar faltered. “He once told me that freedom is not granted by men. Freedom, like hope, is a birthright from God. Your vow is a terrible thing that keeps you bound within the ways of others. Break it, my dear friend, brea—” Dietmar would say no more. He toppled lightly to his side and stared open eyed into the snapping fire.

Heinrich lifted the young man’s head to his breast and wept for him. He did not know why this stranger had become his friend nor how he had become so. He only knew that a good man was gone and he was saddened for the loss.

Heavy-hearted, Heinrich used the rest of his pennies to pay a priest the fees necessary for Dietmar’s burial and stood by a strange-looking woman hidden under her hood as the sole witnesses to the man’s interment. He lingered by the grave for a time and wished he could have known the man longer.

The man from Weyer sighed and bade a final farewell. A cold wind rustled through his shoulder-length hair and lifted his long, gray-laced beard. He pulled his cloak tightly around his shoulders and lifted its hood over his head. He secured his dagger and satchel and rolled Dietmar’s ring around his finger. In the safety of the cathedral’s tall spire he lifted his head to look at the fortress perched on the cliff overlooking the city and drew a deep breath. It was mid-morning and he must get on to things that needed doing.

Heinrich climbed the long, curving road that led to the castle and upon reaching the gate he requested a brief meeting with the archbishop’s steward-of-mines, Laszlo the Hungarian. He was led to a cold corridor where he waited for several hours. Soldiers of the archbishop tramped by in disinterested companies and a few velvetcaped merchants meandered past. Finally, a fur-capped gentleman escorted Heinrich to the steward’s chamber where he was seated on a short bench at the wall farthest from the heat of a roaring hearth. He was introduced as a “country yeoman in want of a moment.” Heinrich grunted. He remembered the steward’s chamber in Villmar’s abbey and he was not comfortable. “I bear this ring to beg … a moment.”

Laszlo stared from dark eyes. He was an arch-nosed, pinched-faced fellow. His frame was lean, almost skeletal, and he looked short on his high chair. Yet he commanded an intimidating presence that few dared challenge. “What’s this?” he grumbled. With a wave his secretary removed Heinrich’s ring and handed it to Laszlo. “Hmm. Dietmar of Gratz. So, you’ve killed my secretary and have come for something?”

“Killed him?” Heinrich was baffled. “N-nay, sire. I cared for him until his death from injury … suffered in your mine at… at Hallein. He said I ought bring this to you and ask if I might labor for you this winter.”

“Ha! Ha!” Laszlo laughed loudly, then rose to his feet and slammed his palm hard atop his oak desk. “What would I do with a one-armed, one-eyed murderer?”

Heinrich paled and he stammered for words. “M-m-murderer? Sire, nay, I am innocent … there’s been no murder. Ask the priest who buried him! He prepared the body … he saw the mormal that rotted his leg—”

“Humph,” snorted Laszlo. He stared at Heinrich for another moment. He enjoyed toying with men of lesser station. What Heinrich did not know, however, was that laborers were desperately needed in the mines. Laszlo tossed the silver ring back to Heinrich. “I believe you to be a runaway.”

The words shocked Heinrich even more than the other accusation. His mind raced. He had just arrived a week before.
Who would have told him? he
wondered. Heinrich gulped. He had been told that a runaway could be hung on the spot where he stood. He licked his lips. “Nay, sire. I am a freeman on a pilgrimage to Rome.”

“Can you prove it?”

Heinrich’s mind raced. He drew his dagger from its sheath. The flash of his steel had barely glistened in the torchlight when three guards were upon him. He was pushed to the ground roughly.

Laszlo laughed. “Bumpkin! Dolt! What sort of fool are you. Why did you draw steel against me?”

“N-nay, sire. I thought to show you I was armed … only free men bear them and—”

“Enough!” Laszlo walked to Heinrich and leaned close. “Pity you’re no runaway. Those who escape their manors to live here and work for me for one year and a day leave with my seal on a passport… forever free … and their heirs as well.” He stared slyly at Heinrich, then returned to his desk. “Have you any skill, freeman?”

Heinrich was still pondering this new opportunity. He knew that any who lived in an imperial city for a year and a day were considered freemen—it was a problem for the landlords of the realm. He hadn’t known that Salzburg was such a city.

“Are you listening, man?” roared Laszlo.

“Aye, sire. I am trained as a baker.”

The steward nodded and smiled. His workers needed bread, and neither the city’s bakers nor their apprentices could be coaxed to stay in Hallein for very long, especially in winter. Laszlo stepped from behind his desk and leaned his face close to Heinrich’s. “Well, pilgrim. I suppose we could use a baker. He tossed the man back his ring. Aye, you are assigned to the bakery at Hallein, where you shall make dozens of the Church’s faithful laborers very happy. For your service you shall be paid in salt like the Roman legions with their
salarium.
This ‘salary’ as we call it, can be exchanged for coin at our moneychanger’s stall in the city when you are given leave.” Laszlo then set his lips by Heinrich’s ear to hiss, “And when you are ready, we shall talk again about your freedom.”

A two-day cart ride delivered Heinrich to the village of Hallein that was nestled within the Dürnberg Mountains. He was given a bed in a worker’s dormitory and introduced to his new master, one Ladislav of Moravia. Ladislav was a dark-eyed, violent man of twenty years who possessed a poor grasp of the German language and even less Christian charity. His task was to squeeze the most production possible out of each worker and he had no patience for fatigue, hunger, cold, or infirmity. Heinrich knew his objective would be to keep as much distance between himself and the impetuous Slav as possible.

The baker was soon working long hours in the bakehouse. He had become proficient in using his one arm in the mixing and kneading of dough and was suddenly grateful for the woeful years in the dreadful cloister in Posen where he had learned to retrain his body. His apprentices watched with admiration as the handicapped man worked the doughs, shaped the loaves, and shuttled the paddles in and out of the brick ovens. More than that, they marveled at the excellent product the newcomer presented to the eager workmen each day.

Through the long winter Heinrich worked faithfully. He was fed amply, his canvas cot was reasonably comfortable, and the dormitory was surprisingly warm. A monumental amount of wood had been stripped from the mountainsides in order to fire the huge furnaces necessary to produce the salt. The relatively small quantities taken for the personal comfort of the workers was barely noticed.

Hallein’s salt mines had been closed for several centuries. In ancient times the Dürnberg Mountains had been mined by the Celts who carved tunnels deep into the mountains. Here they had chiseled clumps of red salt from the narrow veins that spidered their way through the mountain. The clumps were then carried outside where they were smashed into granules, washed, and poured into barrels. One Sabbath afternoon, however, Heinrich learned of the archbishop’s better way. His curiosity called him up the trail from the village to the mine entrance, where he hesitated. He drew a deep breath and picked up a pine-torch. He lit it on the coal bucket and stepped timidly into the tunnel where he immediately saw a dull, curling flame some distance ahead. He walked slowly toward the light until he came upon a sleepy guard dozing against a timber brace.

“Nice and warm in here,” yawned the guard.

Heinrich nodded. He was surprised how comfortable it was.

“Aye, no need for hearth fires. … Good thing else we’d choke on smoke!”

Heinrich grunted and stared about.

The guard was bored and happy to humor the curious man. “See here,” he pointed to a vein of salt. “We needs not hammer away at it. Look, there.” He pointed to some sawed lumber and then held his torch to a hole recently drilled in from above. “We’d be some furlong into the mountain, and about the same distance ‘neath the church that sits atop. In here’s a maze of tunnels from long ago. … They go all ways. See here, the carpenters build a dam in the tunnel, then the workers’ll pour water in from that hole above yer head. They’ll flood the place in springtime.”

“Flood it? Why?”

“Ha … that’s the wonder of the new way. The water dissolves the salt from the walls, then carries it out when the dam is broke into the big vats they’re building down below. Then well boil the water to dry the vats and you’ve salt left on the bottom!”

“Ah!” Heinrich understood.

“Methinks it clever.”

“Aye … very.” Heinrich walked past the guard and moved deeper into the lonely tunnel.

The guard’s voice followed him.
“Glück auf.”

“Huh?”

“Glück auf…
‘tis the miner’s well-wish.”

“Ah.
Glück auf
to you.”

“M’thanks … and beware the bodies and the lake.”

“Bodies?”

“Aye.”

Heinrich stopped walking and called back to the dim torch and the hollow voice beneath it. “W-what bodies?”

“We finds them from time to time, dead men preserved by the salt. You’ll have quite a start if you walk by one with your torch. And up ahead ‘tis the lake. Better if you don’t go for a swim.”

Heinrich paused, then turned around. Perhaps he had seen enough of the mine!