“It’s what I was told,” Luther complained. “Maybe I never quite believed it,
but all the searching I did wasn’t enough to teach me any better. There were
other rumours, of monasteries built atop deep caverns, and strange flowers that
grow underground, but I always discounted them. The wine of dreams isn’t the
produce of the grape—not entirely, at any rate—but no fruit can ripen except
in the sun. If there’s a valley whose entrance isn’t hidden by magic it must be
very well concealed in some other way. Perhaps Albrecht knows more. He’s
certainly had time to enquire since he scuttled back from Marienburg with his
tail between his legs. Even hired a nomad to be his housekeeper, perhaps because
of something she knew that the town’s old crones did not. He’s housebound now,
but he certainly did his share of searching when he first came back and thought
himself unjustly dispossessed. He was ambitious to set himself up as a rival
then, but I dare say that the mysterious makers of the wine of dreams didn’t
want a disgraced brother of mine for a middleman. If I couldn’t find the source
in twenty years of searching, your witch hunter has a hard task on his hands. I
wish him luck.”
“I need a name,” Gottfried said. “I need something that will tell von
Spurzheim which gypsies to question.”
“Who asks a gypsy’s family name?” Luther retorted. “Who obtains a reply if he
does? The nomads keep the secrets of their kind. The witch hunter has only one advantage, in my estimation, and it may
not be enough.”
“What advantage?” Gottfried demanded, exasperatedly.
“The season. Whatever fruit it is that gives dark wine its special qualities
surely ripens when other fruits ripen, and there must be a cycle to its
manufacture. If all living things are prisoners of the calendar, this season’s
crop should now be ready, and those commissioned to bring it away will need to
be summoned soon. If von Spurzheim’s spies can find the final link in the chain
that stretches here from Marienburg, they have a chance of being led to the
source—but if that opportunity is real, it’ll only last for twenty or thirty
days.”
“Guesswork of that kind is not good enough,” Gottfried told him, harshly.
“It is all I have to offer, as a man who has spent his life in the wine
trade,” Luther retorted, stiffly—but his voice was very weak now and his head
lolled back on his pillow, exhausted. His distress was obviously real.
“He’s doing his best, father,” Reinmar murmured. “He has no more liking for
the prospect of being vigorously interrogated by the witchfinder than have you.
If this liquor really is as insidiously evil as you suppose, its source would be
jealously guarded, would it not?”
Gottfried sighed. “I suppose so,” he conceded. “I had better find out what
Albrecht has to say—and you had better get back to your counter. Business goes
on, no matter what.”
Reinmar almost told his father that he had already been to see Albrecht, but
he strangled the impulse. Was he not playing his own game now? Was he not
determined to make his own discoveries, so that he might make up his own mind?
“Are we really in danger?” he asked, instead.
“I hope not,” Gottfried replied, dryly. “But it would be in the interest of
everyone in town if the witch hunter were to pass swiftly through. We must hope
that he finds what he is looking for, and that he brings his business to a swift
and successful conclusion.” He looked down at Luther as he spoke, but the old
man had pulled his black cap over his forehead and had closed his eyes.
Reinmar would rather have gone with his father to see Albrecht than mind the
shop, but he knew that it was useless to protest. Godrich had better things to
do than stand at the counter, and Reinmar knew that it would take far more than
a mere witch hunt to make Gottfried Wieland consent to close his shop during
business hours.
As it turned out, though, Gottfried’s was a wasted trip. Albrecht was not at
home, because Machar von Spurzheim had sent soldiers to arrest him and confine
him in the town jail. They would have arrested his housekeeper too, but she had
fled. The rumours that flew around the town were divided as to whether she had
merely run away for her own safety or had gone to warn the secret vintners that
trouble was on its way. As soon as Gottfried returned he threw himself into
making urgent preparations for Reinmar’s imminent buying trip.
As Reinmar had anticipated, Gottfried delegated Sigurd to serve alongside
Godrich as his protector on the expedition. Sigurd normally worked on the quays
loading and unloading barges, in which service he had built up an impressive set
of muscles. Whenever the stevedores engaged in tug-o’-war competitions against
the local land-labourers, Sigurd was the anchorman who tipped the balance, and in any local contest of individual
strength he was the certain winner. He had never been trained in swordsmanship
but he could wield a staff with terrific force and cunning, and his fists were
as powerful as clubs. He was the kind of man in whose company any lesser mortal
would feel safe, and Reinmar was glad to see him waiting with the wagon when he
brought his own pack down from his room, not long after first light on the
following day.
He was not so pleased, however, to find Matthias Vaedecker waiting alongside
Sigurd, with a pack of his own. He was not wearing his military colours,
although he was carrying a crossbow.
“What are you doing here?” Reinmar asked, in frank astonishment.
“I’ve been ordered to travel with you,” the sergeant said, airily. “Herr von
Spurzheim is anxious for your safety. There are rumours of monsters abroad in
the hills.”
Reinmar’s eyes flicked back and forth between the squat sergeant and the
massive Sigurd. “There are always rumours of monsters in the hills,” he said.
“Wise men know better than to take them seriously.”
“The truly wise man is the one who knows when rumours that are not usually to
be taken seriously begin to carry evil import,” the sergeant informed him,
coolly.
It seemed perfectly obvious to Reinmar that Vaedecker had actually been
commissioned to spy on him, or at the very least to use the expedition as a
cover enabling him to spy on the vintagers they intended to visit and any other
travellers who might be abroad. He knew, too, that Vaedecker must be aware that
it was obvious—but that was not a licence to say the words aloud. All Reinmar
said, instead, was: “Where’s your horse?”
“I’m an infantryman,” the sergeant replied, mildly. “The horses on which I
and my companions arrived in Eilhart were hired, time being short while we still
hoped to catch the man we were following before he disembarked. I shall be quite
content to ride in the cart with you.”
When Godrich joined them, Reinmar asked whether his father knew about the
sergeant’s orders, but it was the sergeant who answered. “He is perfectly
agreeable,” Vaedecker assured him—and Godrich confirmed it with a discreetly
sullen nod.
Gottfried came out of the shop a few minutes later to bid them all farewell,
and he made a show of thanking Vaedecker for lending his services to the party.
“These are troubled times,” he said, blithely overlooking the fact that the only
symptom of trouble so far visible in Eilhart had been von Spurzheim’s arrival,
“and I shall feel much better knowing that Reinmar has a seasoned soldier with
him. The combination of Godrich’s wisdom, Sigurd’s strength and your fighting
skill should ensure his safe return and the profitability of the expedition.”
“I shall do my very best,” the soldier promised, “to ensure that the journey
is as profitable as anyone could hope.”
Not until the cart was loaded and Godrich had the whip in his fist did
Gottfried hand over the purse containing the coins which Reinmar was to use in
purchasing new stock. “Remember,” he said. “Be patient and clever in striking
your bargains. Try not to seem so hard as to cause resentment, but always bear
it in mind that we have an effective monopoly. Maintain an appearance of
generosity—but make sure that it is only an appearance.”
“I shall do my best,” Reinmar promised. “If anyone tries to take advantage of
my youth and inexperience, I’ll tell them that I’m so terrified of my father
that I dare not offer them a penny more than the meanest figure I can calculate,
lest I be flogged within an inch of my life when I return with a wagon half full
and an empty purse. They will easily believe it, will they not?”
“They will,” Gottfried assured him—but his smile was not as broad as it
should have been. “Good luck, my son, and come back safe.”
Ordinarily, Reinmar would have chattered away to Godrich and Sigurd as the
cart rolled out of town, but the presence of the sergeant was a powerful
inhibiting factor. The only topic of conversation within the town that morning
would be the arrest of Albrecht Wieland and its likely import, but that was not
something that could be safely discussed in front of Vaedecker and Reinmar was
not sufficiently desperate to cast about for a harmless substitute.
The road on which they left town was a good one, but their progress was
slowed somewhat by the fact that there was considerable traffic in the other
direction. Although it was the day before the principal market day, the flow of
everyday produce like eggs and milk was swelled by the movement of heavier produce in preparation for the weekly orgy of buying and selling. The further
they drew away from the town, in fact, the more traffic of that kind they
encountered and the narrower the road became. Theirs was the uphill route, which
made their progress even more difficult.
At first, they followed the course of the river, which flowed relatively
smoothly for a league or so above Eilhart pool, even though it was not
considered navigable by cargo-boats. There were plenty of rowboats on the water,
and flat-bottomed ferries bringing carters and foot-travellers from the further
bank, where the tracks were less comfortable. When they came to the first
confluence of the Schilder with one of its lesser streams, they swung away
south-westwards and the way became steeper. The peaks of the Grey Mountains were
visible even in Eilhart, although the intervening hills supported the bleak
horizon with a rich band of green, but the further they went into the forested
slopes the more grey became visible from every ridge, and the true mass of the
mountains became far easier to judge.
By midday they had left the best farmlands behind, having progressed into
drier land better suited to vines than to grain or root vegetables. In the
depths of winter, Reinmar knew, the sun could scarcely raise itself above the
distant peaks and all this land seemed bleak and derelict, but when the sun was
high and shone benignly down upon them the valleys seemed much richer. The best
vines grew on southern-facing slopes, and were always on the farther side of
their particular hills, so the faces to which the cart first came usually looked
wild and unpromising. They were grazed by flocks of ragged goats. When the cart
had moved around to the better side, the vineyards nestling into the hillsides
were revealed, each one dominated by a grey stone house surrounded by labourers’
cottages. A few such clusters were large enough to be reckoned villages, with
their own inns, shrines and burial-grounds, but most were set some way apart
from the dwellings that clung to the banks of streams and the coverts where
fruit trees grew and foresters gathered.
Reinmar made his first purchases as dusk approached, and they lodged that
night with the wine-grower. Reinmar offered no explanation of Vaedecker’s
presence and the grower assumed that he was present at Gottfried’s request to
afford extra protection for his son. This enabled Vaedecker to ask some subtly searching questions about possible difficulties they might face
as they went higher into the hills.
“None that I can vouch for,” the grower assured them. “There is a lot of talk
of monsters and black magic, but such talk is always produced in quantity when
settled folk want an excuse to harass the gypsies. The summer has been an
awkward one—some farmers have had a mediocre but satisfactory harvest while
others have seen their crops utterly ruined by fierce storms. That has lowered
the demand for casual labour, leaving more travellers to roam the land in search
of whatever pickings they can find, and the situation has inflamed the
jealousies that always fester among such folk. Why me? the unlucky always say in
such circumstances. Why me and not him? Who has cursed me with this foul
misfortune? Any violence bred by such talk tends to be suffered by the gypsies
as well as blamed on them—I doubt that anyone will trouble you.”
This sounded to Reinmar like good common sense, although Vaedecker did not
seem entirely satisfied.
What they saw in the course of the next three days seemed to Reinmar to
confirm his judgement. The higher hills were often subject to violent but
localised storms, which could batter fields and buildings with hailstones even
in the hottest months, and such visitations could blast the fruits of one man’s
yearly labour to smithereens while leaving his neighbour’s crop untouched. In
good years the neighbours would rally round, alleviating the disaster with a
portion of their own surplus, but in years when their yields had not lived up to
their own hopes the neighbours were less generous and resentments accumulated.
The pent-up anger usually erupted in ways that would not threaten permanent
relationships, rebounding on strangers and scapegoats. Whenever he saw groups of
gypsies Reinmar noted clear signs of tension between them and the settled folk.
Reinmar had always been instructed by his father to make it a point of
principle to treat gypsies no less politely than anyone else, because the
seasonal labour provided by the nomads was vital to the production of good
vintages. This was partly because time was so much of the essence in harvesting
and processing the grapes and partly because many gypsies were not only skilled
men and women but people with an instinctive feel for the art of wine-making.
Without the contribution of the gypsies, Gottfried had often told Reinmar, the
products they sold would be poorer, and the greatest loss would be suffered by the finest
vintages.