While Albrecht had hardly ever been mentioned, the fact that he was hardy
ever mentioned had not seemed particularly significant. But now the matter had
been so sharply raised the omission took on a new significance in Reinmar’s
thoughts. There was also the matter of his grandfather’s illness. There was
nothing unusual in the fact that the old man was an invalid who never left his
room—there were at least four other houses in the neighbourhood whose attics
played permanent host to an aged grandparent whose name had become legend—but
Reinmar had observed since taking up his new duties that whenever older clients
of the shop felt obliged to ask after Luther’s condition there was always a
slight discomfort or embarrassment in the pronunciation of his name. Although
the customers always took care to say that they were pleased when he reported
that his grandfather was no worse, they did not always contrive to match their
facial expressions to their words. The impression Reinmar had gained was not so
much that his grandfather was disliked as that the old man was feared.
As to the mystery of the “dark wine”, Reinmar had not the slightest idea what
might lie behind it. What could his father possibly have meant by “worse than
Bretonnian’? Why had the stranger been so insistent that he was willing to pay
the full market price for the product? What was the news that Gottfried had
refused to hear, and why was there a warning in it?
Reinmar was still mulling over these mysteries when the shop door opened
again and a second stranger came in. This man was much taller and paler than the
first. He was dressed in clothes which were of better quality, though they were
even duller in hue, being almost entirely black. His eyes were blue; his
slightly hooked nose made them seem hawkish. Reinmar had never seen an eagle at
close range, but this man seemed to have something of the eagle about him.
The second stranger barely glanced about him before coming to the counter. He
reached into his pouch and brought forth a folded piece of parchment. He opened
the bottom flap to reveal a patch of dark red wax into which a seal had been
impressed.
“Do you recognise this?” he said.
“No,” said Reinmar.
“It is the seal of Grand Theogonist Volkmar,” the stranger informed him
loftily.
Reinmar had heard the name of Volkmar before, although he had only the
faintest idea of what a Grand Theogonist might be. Volkmar, so rumour had it,
was a famous warrior who rode into battle on the War Altar of Sigmar. He was
reputed to be the second most important person in the Empire, after Emperor Karl
Franz himself—which presumably meant that any document on which his seal was
set conferred considerable authority upon its holder. What the hook-nosed
stranger was trying to impress upon Reinmar, therefore, was that he was a man of
vast importance—certainly greater than the burgomaster of Eilhart and probably
greater than the baron in whose fief the town lay. Reinmar had never seen the
baron, who seemed to spend all his time in Altdorf.
“Is it?” was all the reply he could contrive.
He did not mean to seem sceptical, but the black-clad stranger took umbrage
anyhow. “Sigmar protect me from the ignorance of peasants!” he exclaimed, with a
world-weary gesture. “What is your name?”
Reinmar sensed that it would be unwise to point out that he was not a
peasant. The stranger obviously knew already exactly what manner of man he was.
“I’m Reinmar Wieland,” Reinmar said, as politely as he could. “Would you like
me to fetch my father, sir? I believe he’s at home.”
“Have you been at this counter all day?” the stranger demanded.
“Yes sir,” Reinmar admitted.
“Then it’s you I want answers from, Reinmar Wieland. Since it seems to mean
nothing to you, I ought to explain that this warrant entitles me to demand
honest answers, and that any failure to give them is punishable by the severest
penalties. I am the Grand Theogonist’s special agent. My name is Machar von
Spurzheim. Think carefully before you answer me. Has this shop been visited
today by a man not known in these parts, perhaps half a hand’s-breadth taller
than you and rather portly, with near-black hair and a dark complexion?”
Reinmar took full advantage of the invitation to think carefully before he
replied, but in the end he said, “Yes.”
“When?” Von Spurzheim shot out the question like an archer loosing an arrow.
“Perhaps half an hour ago,” Reinmar told him.
“What did he want?”
Reinmar had anticipated the question, and had made up his mind that he would
not hesitate. “He asked for something called dark wine,” he said. “I had never
heard of it. My father came in while I was explaining that, and told the man
that we did not stock such a thing.” He knew that he was being slightly
economical with the truth, but instinct told him that it was the safest course
when dealing with a Grand Theogonist’s special agent.
“Is it true that you do not stock dark wine?” the black-clad man demanded.
“It is,” Reinmar confirmed. “I asked my father what dark wine was, and he
would not tell me, but he said that it was something in which we do not deal and
never shall. He was very adamant about it.”
“Was he indeed? And did he tell the customer where else he might obtain what
he sought?”
“No sir. He told him that there was no other possible source. There is no
other wine merchant hereabouts—the nearest shop is in Holthusen, and that is
ours too. Some of the vintagers who supply us will sell wine directly to their
neighbours and occasional visitors, but I never heard of one who made dark wine
and I have lived my whole life in and above this shop.”
“Fifteen years!” von Spurzheim scoffed.
“Sixteen, sir,” Reinmar corrected him, “and nine months.”
“Do you know where the man went when he left the shop?”
“I heard his footsteps going along the street,” Reinmar said, with the utmost
care. “He had turned left outside the door and he was going uphill, in the
opposite direction to the market square.” It was absolutely true, so far as it
went.
“Good,” said the agent of the Grand Theogonist. “I have taken lodgings at the
burgomaster’s house. If you see this man again send word to me, or to the
sergeant in command of the men-at-arms at the inn on the market square—or,
failing that, to the local constables.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left.
Reinmar wasted no time in running upstairs to find his father, but Gottfried
insisted on coming down with him before hearing what he had to say. Gottfried
Wieland was a great respecter of rules, and the cardinal rule of shopkeeping was
never to leave the shop unattended. Once the two of them were back amid the
display stock, however, the older man listened very attentively to Reinmar’s
account of the second visitor—and Reinmar watched his father’s face grow
deathly pale.
“Who is he?” Reinmar asked, as soon as he had told all he knew.
“A witch hunter,” Gottfried replied, in a low tone. “An important witch
hunter, if he carries the Grand Theogonist’s seal, although I doubt that he got
it from Volkmar himself. It’s bad enough that there is any interest at all in
Altdorf in this affair, although I suppose there will always be interest in
Altdorf whenever evil in Marienburg is mentioned. No one now alive remembers the
secession, but Wilhelm’s heir is ever watchful. Did this witch hunter say how
many men-at-arms he has with him? No, of course not—but if he can lodge them
at an inn there can hardly be many. More might be coming, though, now that he knows that he is on the right track. Did you mention Luther or
Albrecht?”
“No,” said Reinmar. “It did not seem politic to reveal that the stranger
called me cousin. Did I do right?”
“You did right,” Gottfried confirmed, although there was no hint of fatherly
pride in the confirmation, “but if he corners his quarry the relationship will
come out anyway, and it would only require one ill-spoken word…”
He broke off abruptly as the door to the shop opened yet again. This time it
was Marguerite who came in. She had found a reason to cut short the period of
quarantine to which her wounded feelings had condemned poor Reinmar. “Reinmar!”
she said, breathlessly. “There are soldiers in the square—they rode in on big
black horses. They came with a witch hunter, it’s said, hunting an evil magician
who stowed away on a barge from Holthusen! That was the witch hunter himself who
left your shop a few minutes ago!”
Reinmar did not know quite what to say to that, but probably would not have
been allowed to get two words out in any case before his father intervened.
“I’ll thank you not to bring gossip into this shop, young lady,” Gottfried said.
“And I’ll thank you not to talk about our customers, whose business is their
own.”
Marguerite looked crestfallen, but her excitement was irrepressible.
“Did he speak to you, Reinmar?” she asked, breathlessly.
“Yes,” Reinmar said—but he had no time to add anything else.
“That’s none of your business,” Gottfried said. “And the witch hunter’s
business is none of ours, thankfully.”
It seemed, though, that he was wrong. Marguerite was still holding on to the
door, having been unsure of her welcome since the moment she had first seen
Gottfried standing next to Reinmar. Now she was pushed gently but firmly to one
side as two armed men entered the shop. Reinmar did not recognise the colours
they were wearing; all he knew for sure was that they were not the Baron’s.
“Gottfried Wieland?” one of them enquired, politely enough.
“That’s me,” Gottfried said.
“Could you possibly come with us to the burgomaster’s house, sir?” The
spokesman was still speaking with a courtesy that seemed perfectly sincere. “My
sergeant, Matthias Vaedecker, would like a word with you, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Are you arresting me?” Gottfried asked, uneasily.
“By no means, sir,” the man-at-arms was quick to reply. “But your name has
been given to Sergeant Vaedecker as that of a man who might be able and more
than willing to help him. Will you come?” There was no hint of a threat in his
tone, but Reinmar knew from his accent that he was a city man, and he had been
told often enough that city men did not always say what they meant, or let their
meaning show in their manner.
“Yes,” Gottfried said. “I’ll come with you. Reinmar, be sure that you keep the
shop open till nightfall. You must not leave the counter under any
circumstances. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, father,” Reinmar said. He wondered, though, whether he did understand.
He already knew that he had to keep the shop open till nightfall, and that he
must not leave the counter. The fact that his father had taken the trouble to
make the instruction explicit and to emphasise it so strongly must have some
further significance—in fact, the words must have been spoken for the
soldier’s benefit rather than for his.
Reinmar and Marguerite watched silently as Gottfried went out of the door
with the two men-at-arms, who turned right towards the market square as he
closed the door behind him.
“Why do they think he can help them?” Marguerite asked Reinmar, when the
silence became unbearable.
“I don’t know,” Reinmar replied. “But who knows more about a town than its
only wine-merchant? Who better to consult as to its secrets?”
“Eilhart doesn’t have any secrets,” Marguerite said, faithfully reproducing
the common opinion of the region. “It’s a nice town. There’s none nicer or safer
anywhere in the Empire.” She spoke as if it went without saying that there could
not possibly be anywhere nice or safe outside the Empire’s bounds.
The sense of being in the nicest and safest town in all the world had always
seemed to Reinmar to make the quality of his prison that much more treacherous,
and to increase the sense he had had for more than a year of being trapped in a
life for which he might be direly ill-suited. “Yes it is,” he agreed. “It always
has been, and probably always will be.”
Reinmar could hardly wait for night to fall, so that he could steal up the
stairs to his grandfather’s room and interrogate him. In the meantime, he
wavered between hoping that Gottfried would stay out of the way long enough for
him to learn whatever Luther cared to reveal to him and dreading that his father
might not return at all, having been thrown in jail on suspicion of having
consorted with evil magicians.
Marguerite stayed with him for an hour, chattering about the possibilities
opened up by the arrival of the witch hunter and his escort, but Reinmar easily
resisted the temptation to tell her that the mysterious stranger they were
hunting was his father’s cousin. She went away again, having had no occasion to
take further offence at his treatment of her, when the second wave of customers
began to arrive in the shop, intent on trading rumours as well as buying wine.
Reinmar knew better than to trust the rumours entertained by labourers, who
rarely knew anything and were ever wont to fantasise, but he could not help
suffering pangs of anxiety when he was assured that the stowaway was a
necromancer from the Cursed Marshes west of Marienburg, a sailor who had gone
mad while cast away on a haunted islet in the Sea of Claws, or a daemonologist
from the Howling Hills who had unleashed a host of evil spirits into the streets
of Altdorf. He had no idea what a necromancer or a daemonologist was, and he
suspected that his wide-eyed informants had no better idea than he, but the
titles seemed pregnant with horrible disaster.
Just as the rush was easing, Machar von Spurzheim returned in the company of
four armed men, one of whom he introduced to Reinmar as Sergeant Matthias
Vaedecker.
“Your father has graciously offered to allow us to search his stock,” the
witch hunter informed Reinmar. “He assures us that he has never placed any dark
wine in his cellars, and we believe him, but he shares our anxiety that there
might be some hidden corner where old stocks lurk of which he knows nothing.”