Chapter Six

In spite of the sleep-denying effect of all the ideas seething in his brain, Reinmar contrived to rouse himself in time to open the shop at the designated hour. He was almost immediately swamped by customers who had far more on their minds than a simple exchange of coin for jugs of wine. Several of them assured him that they had been expecting “this” for years, although they were disinclined to specify exactly what “this” might be. None of them mentioned dark wine in so many words, but more than one commiserated with Reinmar over the fact that the legacy of Luther’s sins now seemed to be descending to his son and grandson.

“Not that the old man ever meant any harm,” Frau Walther assured him, “or even that stuck up brother of his—but meaning no harm isn’t the same as doing none, and chickens always come home to roost. There are evil things abroad in the forest now, so they say. The poachers always say so, of course, but when the woodcutters join in you have to take it seriously. You stick fast to the roads, now, when you go off on your tour of the vineyards, and watch out for the gypsies.”

“More soldiers are coming,” he was told by one of the constables’ wives. “All well and good for your trade, I suppose, but where there’s soldiers there’s trouble. They’ll pass through, it seems, as soon as they’ve figured out where to head for next, but they’ll be back when they’ve done whatever they’ve come to do, dragging trouble in their wake. There are advantages to being at the limit of the river’s navigability, you know—this has always been such a decent town. We never needed soldiers here. Never.”

Gottfried still had not returned by the time the first rush was over, and Reinmar was becoming worried, although one of his loyal customers would have been sure to pass on the news if his father had actually been arrested. When Marguerite turned up, hungry for news, he had not the slightest idea what to tell her.

“People are saying that it’s your grandfather’s fault,” she informed him, hesitantly. “They say that he first got sick because he dabbled in magic. Some even say that your Great-Uncle Albrecht is some sort of necromancer and that his housekeeper is a witch.”

“That’s nonsense,” Reinmar assured her. “Albrecht’s just a harmless old man. His housekeeper might be a gypsy, but she’s just a housekeeper. My grandfather just got sick—magic had nothing to do with it.”

“I don’t think you should go out with the wagon next week,” she said. “It’s not safe.”

“We’re wine merchants,” Reinmar said, patiently. “All but the dregs of this year’s harvest will have been trampled and casked by now, and last year’s will have matured in the wood. We need to restock the cellar. It’s just a matter of doing the usual rounds, filling up the cart. I’ll have Godrich with me, and one of the labourers—probably Sigurd. Godrich and I have both been schooled in swordplay and Sigurd’s practically a giant. Nobody’s going to attack us—and if there are Reiksguard cavalrymen and foot soldiers in the region the roads will be even safer than usual. I’ll be back inside a fortnight.”

“There are tales of monsters in the woods,” Marguerite persisted.

“There have always been tales of monsters in the woods,” Reinmar countered, “and monsters in the mountains, and monsters everywhere else, but who do you know who’s ever been harmed by one? All travellers tell tall tales, Marguerite—I’ll probably bring back a couple myself—but the fact that they always live to tell them suggests that the danger isn’t quite as bad as they make out. I’ll be fine.”

Marguerite would probably have said more, but the door to the shop opened again, and when she saw that it was Gottfried she suddenly remembered whatever errand she had been running for her mother and beat a hasty retreat, leaving father and son alone.

“Have they let you go?” Reinmar asked, awkwardly.

“They never arrested me,” Gottfried was quick to insist. “They wanted my advice, and I gave it freely.”

“They searched the cellars,” Reinmar pointed out.

“As I invited them to do. We have nothing to hide—nothing. I wanted to make that clear.”

“Everyone says that more soldiers are coming,” Reinmar said, tentatively. “Do you know why?”

“Politics,” Gottfried said, succinctly. “There is trouble in Marienburg, and the Empire is always intensely interested in trouble in Marienburg. Even after all this time, the secession still rankles. There are many in Altdorf who would be exceedingly glad to welcome Marienburg back into the Imperial fold, even if the opportunity were bought in blood. The witch hunter has friends in the Reiksguard who are prepared to indulge his whims, it seems, and he thinks that he might find something hereabouts to give him useful leverage over the burgers of Schilderheim and Marienburg.”

“The mysterious source of the dark wine, in which we do not deal,” Reinmar said.

Gottfried looked at him sharply. “You’ve been talking to my father,” he said disgustedly. “What did he tell you?”

“That there is no secret pass through the mountains,” Reinmar said, offhandedly, “and that the dark wine isn’t as black as some would like to paint it.”

Gottfried scowled. “Old fool,” he said. “I’ve decided to bring forward the buying trip. You leave tomorrow. It’s been a good summer—the harvest must have come in on time, and the more industrious vintagers will be ahead of their normal timetable. You won’t be expected so soon, so Godrich might have to improvise a little, but he and I will plan a route tonight.”

“You want me out of the way,” Reinmar said, flatly.

Gottfried hesitated momentarily, but then nodded his head. “Yes, I do,” he admitted. “We have nothing to hide and should have nothing to fear, but people hereabouts have long memories and agile tongues. Von Spurzheim will want to talk to Luther, and Albrecht too—and they may not find it easy to persuade him that they cannot help him. Old animosities might flare up again, and things could become unpleasant. I don’t think anything bad will happen, but I want you out of harm’s way, just in case.”

“I want to know what this is all about,” Reinmar told him, firmly. “If I’m old enough to take a full part in the business, I’m old enough to be let in on all its secrets.”

“There isn’t any secret.”

“Yes there is,” Reinmar insisted. “Or there was, once—and however dead and buried it seemed to be this time yesterday, it’s definitely not dead and buried now. You might be able to stop Luther talking to me, but you can’t stop Albrecht and Wirnt—and if you won’t tell me what this is all about, they will.”

“Who’s Wirnt?”

“Your cousin. Albrecht’s son.”

Gottfried raised an inquisitive eyebrow, and seemed to be on the point of asking how Reinmar knew that—but he had already deduced that Reinmar had been talking to Luther. In the end, he sighed and said: “I’ve never known the half of it myself, and I’ve always been glad of that—but I suppose the time has come when it might be more dangerous to remain ignorant than to know what my father knows, and perhaps what Albrecht knows too. The authorities in Marienburg seem to have stamped out their end of the trade in dark wine, at least for the time being, but they won’t be satisfied with that. They want the source eliminated, and having traced it back as far as this they won’t be in any mood to stop short of their goal. If we can’t help them, they’re likely to assume that the ‘can’t’ is really a ‘won’t’, so we must hope that we can. You’d better come with me while I talk to my father—Godrich can mind the shop for an hour or two, given that it’s so quiet.”

Reinmar felt a thrill of triumph as he realised that for the first time in his life he had forced his father’s hand. He went up the stairs far more lightly than his heavily-treading father, although he had only had a little more rest.

Luther seemed distinctly uneasy when his son and grandson confronted him—unsurprisingly, given that Gottfried was in such a grim mood. The old man’s gaze flickered uneasily from one to the other. “I couldn’t help it,” he said defensively, shrinking back beneath the coverlet. “It wasn’t me who let him in.”

Gottfried was startled, but not completely astonished. “The stout stranger came back,” he quickly deduced. “Albrecht’s brat. He wouldn’t take no for an answer—not from me, at any rate. He’s not still here, I hope?”

“No, he’s not,” said Reinmar. “I saw him as he left. He’s gone into the hills to hide—unless he decided to call on his father first.”

“What did you tell him?” Gottfried asked of Luther.

“What could I tell him?” the old man retorted, resentfully.“ We have no dark wine, and we don’t know where it’s made.”

“And what did he tell you?” Gottfried demanded.

“That his mother, when he found her, seemed hardly old enough to have given birth to him—but that she did acknowledge him, and that he continued to see her in spite of rumours that she was involved in dark magic. She was proud of him, it seems, and told him not to hate his father too much for having gone away and left him in the care of strangers. She introduced him to the wine. He said that the dreams were like coming home—as if they filled a hole in his heart that he had never quite been aware of before. It was as if he had never properly begun to live, until that moment. It was as if… but you have heard such talk before, and did not like it then.”

“I haven’t,” Reinmar put in, quietly.

Luther was still staring at his son, waiting for permission to continue. Gottfried only hesitated briefly before he said: “Tell him everything.”

Luther nodded, and made an obvious effort to collect himself, then shifted his gaze to his grandson. “The dark wine is also called the wine of dreams,” he said, in a voice that was strangely dry as well as weak. “There are other wines from the same source, all darker of hue than the sweetest Reikish and all of which give rise to dreams, but those who know what they are about speak of dark wine in the singular, and the wine of dreams likewise. A few who have had the opportunity to tire of the wine of dreams manage to cultivate an appetite for one or other of its peculiar kin, but their use has always been… esoteric.”

Reinmar wished that he might elaborate on that, but he did not.

“The wine of dreams is the kindest and most generous of the vintages produced by its makers,” Luther continued, “and connoisseurs deem it the very essence of luxury, because the greatest luxury of all is youth and dark wine is a veritable elixir of youth. It has the power to preserve beauty, and zest, and a particular kind of innocence that none but the guilty can appreciate. Is it magic? Perhaps. Who can tell where nature ends and magic begins? All wine intoxicates, and it is surely conceivable that dark wine is merely the finest and purest intoxicant of all. Albrecht used to write to me, in the days when we were still as close as brothers ought to be, that he had heard scholars swear there is no magic in dark wine at all, while others praised it as the greatest magic known to man. A third party damned it as a snare—an alluring gateway to unspeakable evil—but Albrecht never kept company with men of that kind while he was pretending to be a scholar in Marienburg. Nor did I, in Eilhart.”

The old man paused to take a drink; it was Gottfried who helped him with the cup. This time, it was hock rather than water, but Luther still looked as if he would have preferred something far stronger.

“You would not think to look at me now that I was once a man of superabundant youth,” Luther went on, “but I was. I never thought any less of myself because of it, although my father was a man of my son’s stripe—worse, in a way, for he never allowed any kind of liquor to pass his own lips. It needs a sober man to deal in wine, he used to say. Cultivate a liking for the stock, and you’ll pour your profits down your throat. You might think your father’s love of moderation stern enough, Reinmar, but you never had the opportunity to measure him against a real pillar of rectitude.

“Albrecht took the brunt of our father’s wrath and disapproval, and it drove him away. I was younger, and I learned to be sly. I was a drinker long before he found me out, and once I had tasted dark wine I lost my appetite for most lesser vices. But he did find me out, alas, and he was not an easy man to best in a dispute. He had his way, although he had to steal my own son to secure his final victory—and his gain was our loss, for my father never once considered the possibility of refusing to trade in the dark wine and its kin, which is what your own dear father did as soon as he had the whip hand.”

“It was the only way,” Gottfried muttered.

“Was it?” Luther asked, sceptically. “What consternation there must have been in Marienburg when you made that decision! But only for a while. As the Schilder’s assiduous lock-builders discovered long ago, the flow of a river can never be entirely gentled. When the spring meltwater runs from the mountains the gates must be opened wide, and the worst floods can only be diverted; you can only protect land here by diverting the floodwater there. The dark wine was like the Schilder; frustrated in its normal course, it only found other channels to the Reik—and once there, it vanished into the irresistible tide of river traffic.”

“This is no use,” Gottfried butted in. “We need something to give the witchfinder. The only way to get him off our backs is to send him further along the trail. You must have some idea where the dark wine is produced, and by whom.”

“I don’t,” Luther said, stubbornly.

“I don’t believe you,” Gottfried said. “Albrecht went to Marienburg, but you stayed here. You went up into the hills on yearly buying trips just as I have always done. Don’t try to tell me that you never searched for the source of the dark wine.”

“The agents of the dark wine’s producers always came to us.”

“And who were they? Where did they live?”

“They were gypsies—wanderers, without any permanent home.”

“People hereabouts blame such travellers for everything,” Gottfried said, disgustedly. “Every time a chicken is stolen, the gypsies took it. Every time a milk-cow dries up, it was cursed by the gypsies. If a man gets a bellyache, it was never from eating unripe apples, but always because some gypsy crone looked sideways at him. Now you tell me that the gypsies make dark wine—doubtless from wild grapes gathered in some secret valley whose location is known only to their elders.”

“I did not say that they made it,” Luther pointed out. “Merely that they brought it from its source—of which they had nothing, or next to nothing, to say.”

“But you did ask,” Gottfried said. “As often and as cleverly as you could, given your fondness for the stuff. And you say they told you next to nothing. Why the margin, father? What little did they tell you?”

The old man let his head flop back on to the pillow, but there was a wry twist to his mouth as he realised that he had given himself away, and knew that he could no take refuge in his enfeeblement.

“Only that the source was magically protected—that a man might search for years without ever obtaining a glimpse of it, because it was accessible only to those of their own kind who heard the call and to those who accompanied them to see them safely to their destination.”

“What call?”

“How should I know?” Luther protested, his voice becoming feeble again as he wilted under his son’s fierce gaze. “I never heard it—and not for want of listening.” The last phrase was muttered.

“How can I give this to the witch hunter?” Gottfried complained, speaking more to Reinmar than to Luther. “It’s the kind of tittle-tattle you can hear on any street-corner. Gypsies and calls—old wives’ tales, more like. It’s a lie, put about to distract the gullible. You must know more.”

“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.