“Well,” he said to himself, in a whisper, “here I am. I always longed for an
adventure, and now I am in the middle of one. Let’s hope I can acquit myself in
a manner that I can remember gladly for a lifetime.”
In the descending gloom, Reinmar could not judge exactly what manner of farm
the buildings and their surrounding land might constitute, but he was too tired
to worry unduly about matters of detail. He could smell the smoke of chimneys,
lightly flavoured with the odours of recent cooking. He could also hear the
clucking of chickens away to the left of the house—a sound which was deeply
reassuring.
The door of the house opened long before he had a chance to announce his
presence, and a thickset man—presumably the farmer—came out to watch him
approach. The man carried no weapon, but there was a measurable tension in the
way he held himself. After surveying Reinmar from top to toe, as best he could
given the fading light and the obscuring effect of the unconscious girl, the
farmer relaxed a little—but only a little.
“I am Reinmar Wieland, wine merchant,” Reinmar told him.
“Are you, indeed?” the farmer said. “My name is Zygmund. What is your
business here?”
“I lodged last night in a village half a day’s ride east of here,” Reinmar
explained, “with my steward and my servant. We saved the lives of a gypsy girl
and her brother, who had been attacked by local ruffians, but we were not in
time to save them from a beating. When the wagon was bogged down by a sudden storm the girl wandered
off. She was delirious from a blow to the head, and did not know what she was
doing. I followed her till she fell, utterly exhausted—but it is too late now
to make my way back to the wagon, and I have no food or water. If you could
spare a little, and let us rest in front of your fire until our clothes are dry,
I’d be very grateful. I fear that the girl might die in my arms if I cannot set
her down soon.”
There was little change in the stout man’s manner, which remained tense and
suspicious, and Reinmar grew similarly tense while he waited for a response.
“Wieland, did you say?” said the farmer, eventually, as if he were struggling
to recover some faded memory from his long-lost youth. “I believe I know the
name. Come in—and welcome.” The belated addition of the last phrase eased
Reinmar’s anxiety slightly, although it did not sound entirely sincere.
The main room of the farmhouse was tidier than the room in which Reinmar had
talked to Albrecht, but its whitewashed walls and crude furniture were very
similar. Reinmar deposited his burden on the hearth-rug, and Marcilla responded
by stretching herself out to catch the heat of the fire, although she was still
asleep and dreaming.
Zygmund had an equally sturdy wife, who disappeared into the kitchen when
asked to find food, while her husband went out to fetch more logs with which to
build up the fire. The day had never become warm and the rainstorm had cooled
the air considerably, so there was a chill in the dampened air, but it
disappeared when the farmer returned and reset the fire so that it would blaze
up again.
Their host retired again, eventually coming back with a loosely-packed pallet
and two thick blankets. “It’s none too soft,” he said, apologetically, “but the
straw is clean and reasonably inanimate. The blankets will keep her safe and
warm, if you take her wet clothes off. You’ll have to sit by the fire until your
own clothes dry on your body.”
Reinmar accepted the offerings gratefully. He took off Marcilla’s dress,
having covered her with one of the blankets to protect her modesty, and hung it
over the arm of a wooden chair.
The farmer’s wife brought half a loaf of bread and the remains of a haunch of
venison. Reinmar immediately began slicing the meat with his knife, then broke the bread into more manageable
chunks. By the time he had finished this dissection two cups of wine had been
set by the hearth. Reinmar took one up and tasted it. He was surprised at first
to find it reasonably good, until he realised that it must have been obtained
from the very same vineyard that he had visited earlier that day.
“Not the worst of the vintage, by any means,” he murmured. The farmer had
withdrawn again, and could not hear him—in fact, Reinmar slowly realised, he
must have gone out again.
The woman brought in a pitcher of water. “Would you like me to help you feed
the maid?” she asked. “The poor thing seems worn out.”
Reinmar shook his head, bitterly regretful of the fact that poor Marcilla was
far worse than merely worn out. “Did I see another building in the valley?” he
asked, absentmindedly.
“Aye,” the woman said, slowly. “That’s the monastery. Zygmund’s gone there to
ask for help for the maid. The monks have some skill in curing.”
“Monastery?” Reinmar queried, remembering what Luther had said about further
rumours relating to the dark wine’s source. “How many monks live there?”
“Don’t rightly know. No more than sixty, at a guess.”
Sixty! It was a larger figure than Reinmar had expected to hear. So far as he
knew, monks were more given to brewing beer than making wine, but they had
perforce to be able to turn their hands to anything—and monks, it was said,
had first discovered the trick of distillation that allowed wine to be converted
into stronger liqueurs. It was plausible that the wine of dreams might be the
invention of monks—but was it blessed Sigmar these monks worshipped, or some
other deity? And how much more truth might there be in the tales that Luther
Wieland had gleaned while he searched for the source of the wine of dreams?
Reinmar noticed that the woman was studying him with a curious expression
that had a little anxiety in it as well as a little perplexity. He turned his
head away, hoping that it did not seem to be a guilty gesture. Either way, she
took it as an invitation to leave, and he continued feeding himself morsels of
bread and slivers of venison. He persuaded Marcilla to take a little water in
spite of her unconsciousness, and even a little wine, but when he soaked a piece
of bread in water she could not take it into her mouth.
Although he was worried, and did not feel at all safe, Reinmar found himself
relaxing as exhaustion sapped his wakefulness. Once he had finished the
half-loaf he would almost certainly have drifted off to sleep had he not heard
the door of the house opening yet again.
He looked up blearily, expecting to see Zygmund, but the farmer was not with
the two men who came in. They were clad in monkish habits, with satchels thrown
over their shoulders. They must have been abroad during the earlier rainstorm,
because their robes were still wet. The dampness of the dark grey cloth caused
the habits to emit a musty odour like nothing Reinmar had ever scented before.
The monks were both tall and thin of face. When they eased back their damp
cowls to expose the tonsures hollowed in their thick jet black hair Reinmar saw
that they both had eyes which were as uncommonly bright as they were uncommonly
dark. There was something peculiar about that brightness, but Reinmar could not
tell exactly what it was.
The two newcomers looked quickly round the room, then came to the fireside
where Reinmar sat and Marcilla lay.
With barely a nod to Reinmar, one of the monks set his satchel aside and
knelt beside the girl. He laid his hand upon her forehead, then against her
cheek. He seemed genuinely concerned—but his companion was studying Reinmar
with great care and obvious curiosity.
“She’s feverish,” the kneeling monk reported. “This head wound has hurt her
badly, and I fear for her life. You did well to find shelter, young man—I only
hope and pray that it is not too late to save her. Did you have to carry her
far?”
“Quite a way,” Reinmar said, his anxiety greatly renewed by the monk’s
uncompromising diagnosis. “I was very lucky to find the farmhouse, because I was
utterly lost. I’m sure that I couldn’t have found my way back to my wagon. Is
she so very ill? My steward thought that she would recover, although that was
before she went wandering off after the storm had soaked her clothes.” He made
room so that the two newcomers could dry their wet robes in the full heat of the
flames, while the monk who had remained standing threw more wood to the hungry
fire.
“It’s a bad day to be out and about,” the kneeling monk remarked. “The storm
caught us all by surprise, it seems, and it certainly has not helped your friend. She has been wet through, and then
exhausted. If she was not in mortal danger before, she is now. I’m Brother Noel,
by the way, and my companion is Brother Almeric. Our house is on the far side of
the lake. Perhaps you caught a glimpse of it as you came down the slope.” His
tone was amicable enough, but slightly guarded.
Reinmar knew that the two men did not know quite what to make of him,
although Zygmund must have told them his name and profession. He repeated it
anyway, for the sake of emphasis as well as politeness.
“I’m Reinmar Wieland, wine merchant of Eilhart. The girl is named Marcilla, so
her brother told me. She has hardly said two words herself since we rescued her
from the louts who had attacked her in a nearby village.” He looked down
fearfully, knowing that he had no experience on which he might base an accurate
assessment of her plight.
“Wieland the vintner?” Brother Almeric said, thoughtfully. “We used to know a
man of that name once, did we not, Brother Noel?”
“We did,” his companion confirmed. Reinmar wondered whether “we” was supposed
to signify the two monks themselves, or merely their community.
“My grandfather Luther used to visit these parts regularly,” Reinmar informed
them. In spite of his concern for Marcilla he knew that he must keep in mind
that he had another agenda to follow. “Unfortunately, he fell ill and had to
resign the management of the business to my father Gottfried before my father
had been fully trained, and he lost contact with some of our former suppliers.
Now that I am old enough to play my part, we hope that we might regain some of
the trade that we lost.”
“Indeed?” said Brother Noel. “We are inexperienced in matters of trade, I
fear. We ourselves have little intercourse with the villages in neighbouring
valleys, although the man whose house we are in has always been a good
neighbour. He does a good deal of bartering on our behalf, and we have other
friends in the region.” He spoke as straightforwardly as Reinmar had, but
Reinmar was sure that he knew perfectly well what “the trade that we lost” might
mean.
“I fear that I have eaten all the bread,” Reinmar said, “but there is a
little meat, and the cup of wine the farmer’s wife brought for Marcilla is virtually untouched.” He was still looking anxiously down at
the girl, and he reached out a hand to touch her troubled face as he spoke her
name. She was very feverish, now that the fire had warmed her again.
“We have bread of our own,” Almeric retorted, gruffly, “and wine too. Better
wine than this.”
“Indeed?” said Reinmar. “I thought this an unusually pleasant vintage. I
bought a healthy fraction of the crop from which it came this very morning.” He
only hesitated for an instant before adding: “If you have better, I’d be glad to
taste it.”
Brother Almeric did not seem enthusiastic to respond to that request, but he
looked to his companion for advice.
“Did you, perchance, come here in search of the monastery, Master Wieland?”
Brother Noel asked, lightly but warily. “Our wines had a certain reputation
once, among connoisseurs of sweet liqueurs as well as those who knew their
medicinal value.”
“I had no idea that the monastery existed,” Reinmar assured them. “Had the
gypsy girl not led me such a dance I’d have passed the valley without ever
knowing that it was here—but I’m always interested in good wines. I am, as you
will readily appreciate, a mere apprentice still in the process of learning the
trade, but I’m eager to build the family business up to its former profitability
and esteem. Can you help her? Zygmund said that you had some skill in curing—that is why he fetched you, is it not?”
While Reinmar was making this careful speech Almeric had opened his satchel
and had taken out the end of a stick of bread, somewhat begrimed, and a small
stone bottle. The bottle’s stopper was securely clamped in place with leaden
wire.
“We can help her,” Noel said, “if you will consent to allow Brother Almeric
to give a modest draught of this liquor to the girl. I do not think that it will
enable her to recover her senses now, but it will work to her advantage in the
long run. It has remarkable powers of revivification, and the members of our
order have always enjoyed unusually good health.”
It was not until these words were spoken that the full import of what he was
doing came home to Reinmar. He had been playing his part in spite of his
anxiety, and had led himself into a trap. What Marcilla was being offered, he
realised, must be one of the dark wines. If the judgement of Gottfried Wieland
and Machar von Spurzheim could be trusted, he was being asked to let the
monks dose her with the very essence of evil. On the other hand, he thought, the
only people he knew who had actually tasted the dark wine were Luther and
Albrecht, both of whom spoke of it in far warmer terms and both of whom were
still alive to tell the tale. Neither, it seemed, had become a hopeless addict,
and neither had come to any swift or permanent harm as a result of its use.
For several seconds he was in an agony of indecision so intense that he could
not form a syllable of protest when the decision was taken out of his hands.
Almeric had knelt down beside his companion, who moved aside. The stopper had
already been removed, and Almeric put the neck of the bottle directly to
Marcilla’s mouth.
She had been unable to take more than a tiny sip of water or ordinary wine,
but as soon as this liquor touched her lips she raised her head slightly, and
when the liquid entered her mouth she drank it greedily. Reinmar extended a hand
as if to stop him, but there was no real force in the gesture and Brother Noel
reached forward to take his wrist, gently but firmly.