Chapter Twenty-Three

It had been dark for an hour when the cart finally rolled to a halt outside Gottfried Wieland’s shop. The horses should have been rested long before, but Godrich had kept them up to their work, on the assumption that they would have plenty of time to recover from their extraordinary exertions. Their load had been lightened for the last few miles because Reinmar and Vaedecker had walked with Sigurd. Vaedecker had not ridden in the cart since sleeping for thirteen hours after their escape from the valley, having recovered his strength easily enough.

Reinmar had not been so fortunate; although his exertions had taken a far greater toll of his limited strength he had hardly been able to sleep for more than an hour at a time during the days and nights following his adventure in the underworld, waking as soon as uncomfortable dreams began to disturb him—and it seemed that he had lost the knack of finding any kind of dream that was other than profoundly uncomfortable. Marcilla had slept far longer, far more deeply—and, if appearances could be trusted, far better—but she seemed to be in a perpetual daze whenever she awoke.

They had not been attacked while they were on the road, either by men or by monsters—but sometimes, when they looked behind them as they rested, they had seen shadowy figures lurking in the woods or on the ridges of the hills. As if to combat this ominous sign, however, the further they descended from the hills the more benign the weather had become. The kindness of the daylight and the increasing familiarity of the terrain had brought a little peace of mind to all of the travellers.

Matthias Vaedecker had taken the first opportunity to wash the clotted blood and other stains from the clothes he had worn when he entered the valley, and Reinmar had followed his example, but neither of them put those clothes on again when their replacements became soiled. Neither of them was able to think of the clothes they had worn in the underworld as clean, no matter how thoroughly they were scrubbed.

Gottfried Wieland was waiting in the street to welcome the cart, having received advance notice of its approach from a watchman. He had three labourers ready to convey its cargo to the cellar, and the waiting crowd was swelled to more than twice that number by other anxious faces. Machar von Spurzheim was with them, with two attendant men-at-arms. Godrich’s wife and son were also there, and so was Marguerite. The reactions of these individuals were as varied as might be expected, even though none of them could have had any advance indication of what had befallen the members of the expedition.

While Godrich took Gottfried aside to whisper a report, and Vaedecker did likewise with the witch hunter, Reinmar found himself face-to-face with Marguerite, who seemed very enthusiastic to hear a full account of his adventure. He, for his own part, was anxious to know what had happened in the town while he had been away.

“We brought these two gypsies away from a village where they were attacked by farmhands,” Reinmar said, allowing Ulick to take responsibility for putting a protective arm around Marcilla’s shoulder. “Then we were attacked in our turn. But as you see, we are all alive and unhurt. Had the soldier not been with us it might have been different, but he and Sigurd make a fine team. What news is there of my great-uncle?”

“He is still in prison,” Marguerite told him. “More soldiers have been arriving in the town every day—and others who certainly are not soldiers, though they may be fighting men of some sort. Three warehouses by the quays have been converted into barracks, and there are officers billeted in every inn and lodging-house. There are men sleeping in stables and storerooms, and their quartermasters are acquiring provisions on a massive scale, although they seem very reluctant to pay a proper price. The market has become a battleground. Some of the townsfolk are sealing their houses and moving their entire households downriver; others are sending their wives and children away but keeping their menservants at home, fearful that their houses might otherwise be requisitioned or looted. No one knows when or whether the soldiers intend to move on again, or where they will go if they do. What is happening, Reinmar? Is there really an army of monsters gathering in the hills?”

Reinmar was saved the trouble of improvising an answer to this question by the intervention of his father, who hauled him away in a peremptory fashion. Gottfried told Marguerite to go home, without bothering to be overly polite. She made not the slightest move to obey, and followed them into the shop so that she could hear what Gottfried had to say, and what responses Reinmar might make.

“Am I expected to find a room for these gypsies?” Gottfried demanded.

“We have plenty of rooms, father,” Reinmar said, obstinately. “We gave them protection, and we have good reason to believe that they still need it.”

“Reason enough to leave the wagon and go haring off into the wilderness? Reason enough to leave Godrich alone when he was hurt and the cart broken? Reason enough, even though you had been attacked?”

The effect of these questions was to stimulate an anger that Reinmar had long held in reserve, and his replies would undoubtedly have caused more trouble. He had no time to make them, though, because Marguerite was rudely thrust aside for a second time as Machar von Spurzheim strode into the shop.

“Leave the boy be,” the witch hunter instructed, ignoring the amazement which took immediate possession of Gottfried Wieland’s face. “He has been brave as well as reckless, so my sergeant says, and his bravery may have won considerable gains for our cause. You can welcome him home in your own fashion later—for now, I have need of him and he must come with me.”

Gottfried opened his mouth to protest, and the words nearly escaped before he remembered who he was talking to, and how delicate his dealings with the witch hunter had been. Had his face been more brightly lit it would probably have exhibited his ire very clearly, but the lamp happened to be placed in such a way that he was in shadow—not that von Spurzheim was watching, for he had already reached out a hand to take Reinmar by the arm, and was already drawing him towards the door.

“Make the girl comfortable, I beg of you,” was all that Reinmar had time to say to his father before he was hustled out into the street again. “You must keep her safe.”

“Do as the boy says,” von Spurzheim added, as he paused briefly in the doorway, having positioned himself squarely between father and son. “The boy and girl might be vital to our enterprise. It is in everyone’s interest that you keep them safe.”

Reinmar could not see how his father reacted to this instruction, but he could imagine it well enough. Given that Gottfried was the son of one man suspected of involvement in sorcery and the nephew of another, he could hardly afford to offend a witch hunter, but necessity would not make the indignity any easier to bear.

While von Spurzheim marched Reinmar through the streets Matthias Vaedecker and the other men-at-arms fell into step behind them, and Reinmar was uncomfortably aware that it would seem to any onlookers that he had been arrested—all the more so because they were not moving in the direction of the burgomaster’s house, where von Spurzheim had established himself as a guest, but towards the town jail, where Albrecht Wieland was still being held under guard. Reinmar was also uncomfortably aware of the fact that if von Spurzheim demanded the privilege of searching him, the presence of the phial in his pouch might indeed give cause for his arrest and incarceration.

Although the streets were by no means crowded once they had moved away from Gottfried Wieland’s shop, Reinmar did not doubt that there were eyes aplenty following his course. Every house that had a curtained window, whether glazed or not, had the curtain in question moved slightly to one side, so that the apprehensive dwellers within might keep track as best they could of the trouble that had visited their town.

“Don’t be afraid, lad,” was all that von Spurzheim said to him while they strode through the streets. “Sergeant Vaedecker has told me what you did, and I’m exceedingly grateful to you, no matter that your motives might not have been as pure as I could have wished.”

There was no reasonable reply that Reinmar could make to this, so he contented himself with silence, until they reached the blockhouse where the town constables discharged their official duties, and where felons were kept until the assizes at which they were tried. Once they were inside, von Spurzheim wasted no time in taking Reinmar to the windowless room in which Albrecht Wieland was confined.

Reinmar was glad to see that his great-uncle did not seem to have been badly maltreated; the old man had no obvious injuries and he did not look as if he had been starved. The pallet on which he had been sleeping was crude but it provided reasonable relief from the hardness of the stone floor and the stink from the iron bucket in the corner was not too awful to bear. Albrecht was obviously startled to see Reinmar in the company of Machar von Spurzheim, but he appeared to be completely in control of his faculties and his only reaction, once the initial astonishment had faded, was to knit his brows in concentration. Matthias Vaedecker closed the door of the cell behind him, leaving the other two men-at-arms outside.

“Your grandfather’s brother has been helping us, Reinmar,” von Spurzheim said, when Vaedecker had come to stand beside him. “His memory is a trifle vague when it comes to names and places, but he usually remembers his old friends once we have laid their names before him. There is a community of scholars to whom he once belonged, in whose activities we have long been interested—but there is little left of it now. Unfortunately, he does not know what has become of his son, Wirnt, or his former housekeeper. His house has been watched night and day, of course—as has your own, merely as a precaution—but no visitors had arrived when the sentries were last changed. It’s possible that Wirnt is in Holthusen, where a few of the so-called scholars still remain, but he may have gone southwards, towards the place which you recently had occasion to visit. I hope that you will tell your great-uncle all about your adventure, so that he might have a clearer idea of the evil nature of the business in which he has involved himself.”

The last words were obviously intended to elicit a reaction from Albrecht, but Albrecht was ready for some such move and his expression hardly changed.

“Fortunately, Magister Albrecht,” von Spurzheim went on—pronouncing the word “Magister” as sarcastically as he had earlier pronounced the word “scholar”—“Reinmar has been far more helpful to our cause than we could ever have hoped; he is obviously his father’s son. He has succeeded where you and your brother apparently failed. He found the source of the wine of dreams at the first attempt, which inclines me to believe that it cannot have been so very difficult after all. Not only did he guide Sergeant Vaedecker there, but he penetrated its deepest secrets, and then brought about their escape. And there is more, is there not, Reinmar? What was it that you did, exactly, when you were briefly separated from the sergeant?”

Reinmar hesitated before replying. His eyes were fixed on his great-uncle’s face—more by virtue of concern for the old man than because he was avoiding the witch hunter’s eye—but he knew that the game being played here was being directed by von Spurzheim, and he was not at all sure that he wanted to play it by von Spurzheim’s rules.

“I discovered the method by which the wine of dreams is made,” he said, softly, although he knew that it was not an adequate answer to the question. “Those who drink it, and value it, can have no conception of its origins or they would never let it pass their lips, no matter how sweet it might be.”

“It is made by plants nourished on human flesh,” von Spurzheim said, by way of amplification. “But you were better placed than Sergeant Vaedecker to understand exactly how the process works, were you not?”

“I only saw a storeroom,” Reinmar said. “Nothing more. But I saw no fruit, nor any kind of press. I saw large mortars where vegetable flesh was ground, and vats into which the resultant fluid was decanted. The flowers that produce the wines of the underworld were so vast that I could not help but wonder whether the wine might be their nectar, but I can’t be absolutely certain. People are fed to those plants, great-uncle. Those who are chosen hear some kind of summons in their dreams. Young people, with their whole lives before them, are drugged with the wine, and then the seeds are planted in their living flesh, within an underworld whose rocks shine with a strange and dazzling radiance. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

“The false monks who grow these murderous flowers attempted to sell Reinmar some of their most recent vintages,” von Spurzheim added, when it became clear that Albrecht still had nothing to say. “He refused them, even before he knew what they were. But when he found the storeroom, he did know. What did you do then, Reinmar? Even Matthias seems uncertain.”

“Had I been able to upset the stone vats and spill their contents, I would have done it,” Reinmar said. “I could not—but I smashed every vessel I could lay my hands on and emptied the contents of those I could carry into a channel that drained into the depths of the world. I can’t be sure what proportion of their stocks I spoiled there, but I suspect that the shortages in the river towns and Marienburg will grow far worse before they can begin to improve.”

“I had hoped, Magister,” von Spurzheim said, in seeming imitation of the softness of Reinmar’s voice, “that you might be able to advise us as to the possible effects of that scarcity.”

When Albrecht spoke at last, it was to say: “I have no idea. I have been out of touch for far too long.”

“But you have seen men driven to distraction and madness by lack of the wine, have you not?” von Spurzheim persisted. “You, of course, are possessed of an enviable strength of mind and body—more so than your brother Luther, I dare say—but you have seen others whose dependency was greater. Have you not seen men driven to self-mutilation, suicide and murder, and others reduced to mere gibbering wreckage while their nightmares marked their flesh with agonising scars?”

“I have seen men distressed,” Albrecht admitted, dully, “who blamed their distress on thirst for the wine and dreams that had turned from good to bad. Some men are less able to tolerate nightmares than others—but those who were driven to violence were violent before they ever took a sip of the wine.”

“Do you think so?” von Spurzheim said. “I am not so sure.”

“You seem to have discussed the matter with at least as many people as I ever did,” Albrecht replied, stonily, “and more persuasively too. I dare say that you are better placed to guess than I am, even though you have never deigned to put your own tastes to the test.”

Von Spurzheim laughed, but the lightness of the laugh was contrived. “Perhaps I am,” he said. “At any rate, I have plans to make. I dare say that you have private matters to discuss with your nephew, so I’ll leave you alone. Matthias will collect you in a little while, Reinmar—I have a few questions still to ask you, if you aren’t too tired.” He did not wait for a reply but left the cell with Vaedecker, who opened the door and then closed it behind them.

Reinmar was not fool enough to believe that it was safe to talk. Someone would undoubtedly be listening—but the door was thick, and Albrecht was by no means hard of hearing. He drew his great-uncle to the corner of the cell that was farthest from the door, and lifted his lips close to the old man’s ear before he said: “Are you all right? Have they hurt you?”

“They had no need,” Albrecht murmured. “They have already found out more than I can tell them as they came from Marienburg. They have kept me here to make sure that I do not talk to Luther, who is prisoner enough in his own home, with a very dutiful jailer. Not that I blame Gottfried. It is all true, then? I suppose the witch hunter would not have let you come here otherwise.”

“It’s all true,” Reinmar confirmed. “The magic of the dark wine is rooted in horrors. It has to be stopped. Von Spurzheim is right about that.” Not for a moment did he contemplate the possibility of confiding to his great-uncle that he had a portion of the active ingredient of the wine of dreams—or one of its darker kin—in his possession.

Albrecht did not seem to know what to say next, but he decided in the end. “It’s probably too late for advice, but you must be careful,” he murmured very softly. “Whatever you might think, I cannot believe it was luck or cleverness that guided you to a place that no man of Eilhart has ever been able to find. There is a clash of schemes here, and von Spurzheim’s coming will surely prompt a response of some sort. Be very, very careful, else you be crushed or cut to shreds in the collision. If they will let you go, go—to Holthusen, at least. Those who are fleeing the town are the wise ones. Follow them if you can.”