Chapter Thirty-Four

Reinmar awoke when water splashed his face. When he raised his head the rim of a cup touched his lip and he drank avidly. He took the cup in his own hands and drained it completely before looking up into the candlelit face of the man who had given it to him.

“Godrich?” he said.

“That’s right,” the steward agreed. “What happened here, Master Wieland?”

For a moment, Reinmar did not even know where he was, but when his eyes had taken in the wine-racks he remembered. His first thought was to look for Marcilla, and it was not until he had registered the fact of her absence that he became aware of the significance of the fact that there were others missing too.

Wirnt had gone. So had Marguerite. Did that mean that she had been taken prisoner again?

Reinmar looked at the blank wall then, and saw a gap where a loose brick had been carefully removed. He stood up, silently cursing the discomfort that immediately afflicted his arms and legs. He looked into the hole, but there was nothing there. He put his hand into the space, extending groping fingers into every cranny. If the phial had been there he would have been able to touch it, but it was not. Had it ever been there, he wondered, or had the drama played out in the cellar been a mere charade from beginning to end? Had Marcilla led Wirnt to Ulick under false pretences, so that Ulick might smash the stone jar upon his head?

Godrich was still waiting politely for an answer.

“My cousin Wirnt was here,” Reinmar told him. “He was looking for dark wine, but Luther had taken the phial I brought from the valley. If Luther really did hide what remained in here, I have no idea where it is now. What hour is it?”

“Three after noon,” Godrich told him. “You should come upstairs, if you can walk. I’ve made a meal of sorts, though there’s nothing at all to be bought in the market.”

“Three after noon! I must have slept the clock round, or very nearly.” Reinmar consented to be led away in the direction of the stair, but he looked for his sword first and was not at all pleased to find it gone.

“I dare say that you needed the sleep,” Godrich observed, as they began to climb the stair, unhurriedly. “To judge by the state of your clothing, you were in the thick of it.”

“Is it over?”

“Not quite, but the Reiksguard have matters under firm control.”

“The Reiksguard. Not von Spurzheim?”

“He’s dead. They suffered heavy losses reaching him, but reach him they did. Vaedecker too, I’ve heard—and Sigurd. Your father’s safe, though.”

“What about your sons?”

“My family are all well,” Godrich said. His relief was obvious. “We’ll be safe now, I think.”

“I suppose so,” Reinmar said, as they moved into the kitchen. “It was von Spurzheim they wanted dead. Vaedecker told me that he would be replaced, but that his replacement wouldn’t have his knowledge, or his particular obsession. They’ll search for the valley, but when they fail to find it, they’ll go on to something else. The Reiksguard will maintain a presence in the town for a while, but they’ll find better things to do soon enough. It’s not over, by any means—but things will soon be back to normal, for those of us who survive.”

“The road to Holthusen is already open,” Godrich told him, as if it were proof. “The river route will have to await the repair of the locks, I fear, and that will have to wait till the water runs a good deal cleaner than it does now, but more soldiers have already arrived to help with the clearing up. No one’s taking tally of the enemy casualties, but ours—the town’s, that is, not including soldiers—number a few hundred. Not as many as a thousand, thankfully. The soldiers lost hundreds too, of course, but the new forces will compensate for that. The fires were not quite as bad as they seemed, although the quays and the storehouses nearby were devastated and a dozen homes were gutted.”

By the time this speech was finished Godrich was filling Reinmar’s cup again, from a pitcher. “Take care, sir,” the steward added. “Drinking water’s in direly short supply.”

Reinmar felt a slight stab of guilt at the realisation that he had already emptied the cup. “Where’s my father?” he asked.

“Gone to look for your grandfather.”

Reinmar frowned at that. “Gone where to look for my grandfather?”

“Albrecht’s house. You should eat something, sir. It looks unappetising, I know, but you should eat.”

Reinmar looked at the “meal” that Godrich had laid out. There was no bread and no meat, and the boiled vegetables were not in the least inviting, but he knew that Godrich was right. He ought to eat while he could. There would be such hunger in the days and weeks to come that even this would come to seem, in memory, an enviable feast—but there were more important things to worry about. “Is the way to Albrecht’s house safe?” Reinmar demanded, as he sat down and picked up a spoon. “Is the house still standing, for that matter?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Godrich told him. “But Gottfried believes that if Luther is to be found at all, that is where he will be.”

“Wirnt will surely draw the same conclusion,” Reinmar murmured. “That bastard stole my sword—and he may still have Marguerite. I ought to-”

“Eat first,” Godrich finished for him, nudging Reinmar’s spoon in the direction of his mouth. “I urged your father not to take the risk, but… well, sir, there is a matter between the two of them that has been unsettled for many years, as you probably know.”

“The matter of the dark wine,” Reinmar said.

“The matter of authority in the business,” Godrich countered. “The matter of self-determination, and the power to achieve it. Sometimes, sir, children are not as dutiful towards their parents as custom and morality demand.”

For a moment, Reinmar thought that he was being accused, but he realised that Godrich was referring to matters between Gottfried and Luther. He spared a thought too for Wirnt and Albrecht—and for Valeria. Whatever else the wine of dreams might give to its consumers, it was obviously very unhelpful to family feeling.

“Do you have any idea what happened to Marguerite?” Reinmar asked, as he continued forcing food into his mouth. There was turnip in the mess that had been piled on his trencher, and cabbage, but nothing that he could think of as pleasurable eating. Even so, he was hungry, and his stomach appreciated the bulk. “She was with me in the cellar. Cousin Wirnt held a knife to her throat in order to compel me, but the gypsy boy knocked him out. Wirnt must have recovered consciousness while I was still asleep, and if Marguerite was still there, for whatever reason…”

“I haven’t seen her,” Godrich said, “but you should ask at her home before jumping to ominous conclusions. Change your clothes first, though—for your own sake as well as her mother’s.”

“He has my sword,” Reinmar repeated, sullenly. “Perhaps he has the nectar too—but if he did take Marguerite, he must think that there is still something to be won by bargaining, so I must assume that Marcilla took the phial.” He had finished as much of his meal as he was capable of putting down his throat, and he rose to his feet again.

Godrich obviously did not think he had eaten enough, but made no move to stop him.

“You’re right about the clothes,” Reinmar said, as he turned to go to his own room—but he paused on the threshold and said: “Did I do wrong, Godrich? Was it my foolishness that spoiled Eilhart?”

“I do not know what you did, sir,” Godrich pointed out, with a politeness so scrupulous as to be almost insulting. “You did not confide in me.”

“I wasn’t supposed to find my way into the underworld beneath the monastery,” Reinmar told him, flatly. “The fact that I discovered the secret of the dark wine’s manufacture was of no particular importance—but I spilled their vintages and I stole a vital ingredient that might have been used to make more. I robbed a dark god of a small fraction of his power to do evil. Should I have let that power alone, to continue in its subtle work of evil?”

“I cannot tell,” Godrich said. “I wonder, though, why you did not tell anyone else about the nectar you removed.”

“I was angry and outraged,” Reinmar confessed, “and I wanted to make my mark. I wanted to make my wrath felt, but I also wanted a secret to keep, a power of my own. I did not know who to trust, but that was not the reason for my refusal to trust anyone. I wanted to be a player in the game, not a pawn. Because of that, Eilhart was nearly destroyed.”

“Not because of that,” Godrich said. “Those things which came last night have no other reason for being than to maim and destroy. Had they not fallen on Eilhart they’d have done the same work elsewhere. Eilhart is fortunate in having such passionate defenders. The world is the world, Master Reinmar. It is not your fault, or mine, that there is evil in it. We fight it as best we can. That is what you did.”

Reinmar nodded. “Thank you,” he said, before ascending the stair to his bedroom.

Once there he went immediately to his closet and his trunk. He had spoiled so many clothes of late that he was lucky to have any left at all, especially since Luther had stolen his best suit, but it was Reinmar’s good fortune to be the scion of an unusually prosperous family. The outfit he decided to put on was a little too small as well as inelegant, but it had to do.

The water left by his bedside for washing had not been changed for two days, and he did not suppose that it would be changed for another fortnight, so he was more careful than usual in trying to clean the worst of the muck from his hands and face. He succeeded well enough, although he still seemed a slightly sorry sight when he looked at himself in the mirror.

When he turned away from the mirror he intended to go to the door, but some unaccountable impulse made him hesitate on the threshold. He waited for a moment, trying to figure out what it was that had made him stop. Then, still without being certain, he turned back.

He went to his favourite hiding-place, in which he had secreted the phial of nectar before it was stolen by Luther. It had not been there when he had replaced the strip of mortar, but as soon as he removed the fragment again he saw that the hidey-hole was no longer empty.

Someone had replaced the phial, from which no more than a couple of drops had been removed.

“Marcilla,” he muttered. But he knew now that Marcilla was not wholly Marcilla, and that it was the other part of her—her possessor—that had put the phial back where Wirnt had already looked for it and failed to find it.

Everyone in the world, it seemed—and perhaps one beyond it—was determined that he should be a wine merchant, no matter how hard he might try to avoid that fate.

He took the phial, and put it in his pouch. Then he went back to Godrich and asked him for the loan of a sword.

Godrich told him that there was no weapon of any kind in the house, all of them having been requisitioned by von Spurzheim. “I suspect, however,” the faithful servant said, “that if you care to use your eyes as you cross the town boundary, you might well find something you can use.”

This prophecy proved correct, although Reinmar was careful to visit Marguerite’s house before putting it to the test. Her mother had not seen her, and was extremely displeased to discover that she was no longer safe in Gottfried Wieland’s house. There was nothing Reinmar could say in reply but that he was sorry, and to swear on his life that he would bring her safely home.