Chapter Five

“The relative peace that we enjoy was not cheaply bought,” Albrecht told Reinmar. “The price my father’s generation paid was fierce repression. If the scholars of Marienburg are right in their account of the world, much of that repression was necessary and wholly justified, but the forces of repression never know when to stop or relent. Trade in the wine of dreams—which is not the only dark wine but the one most commonly used and the one to which most men refer when they use the phrase—had been established for centuries before my father’s time, but when it was investigated by agents of Magnus the Pious and his Theogonists it was quickly limited, and then proscribed.

“Suppression of the trade was by no means welcome in Marienburg, and may even have played some small part in the events leading to secession, but that was before my time. The trade went underground thereafter, at least in the lower reaches of the Reik, but it was tolerated by local people to whom it was a matter of custom. The main effect of the notional ban was, in fact, to increase curiosity among those who dealt in the wine as to the reason for its bad reputation. Yes, I used dark wine myself—more freely, I dare say, than Luther—and I would have continued to use it had I been able to stay in Marienburg or had I been able to secure a supply of my own when I returned to Eilhart. Once the traffic was taken out of the charge of our family, however, I found it as hard to come by as anyone else and I am too poor nowadays to support expensive habits.

“If Wirnt has fled Marienburg there must be further trouble in the city, completing the disruption of the dark wine’s supply. If a witch hunter and soldiers are mere hours behind him, the trouble in question is presumably a crusade of sorts. Whatever Wirnt might have told you, I doubt that it is filial affection that has brought him here. He is more likely to be searching for the source of the wine of dreams. He might even be hoping that Luther can tell him where to continue his search.”

“He did ask for Luther before he asked for you,” Reinmar confirmed.

“He will probably come here too,” Albrecht said, mournfully. “He is likely to go anywhere and everywhere in search of a clue, and he will draw the witch hunter after him. I only hope that someone can persuade him that the secret lies beyond the mountains. He will do less harm hereabouts if he goes in search of the famous secret pass without undue delay.”

“My grandfather does not believe that there is any such pass,” Reinmar commented.

“Nor does any man who knows the mountains,” Albrecht agreed. “But it has been a convenient fiction for centuries—and the truth is that no one knows where the wine of dreams and its kin are made, or by whom, or by what process. Its makers guard their secret well, and wisely so.”

“What kin?” Reinmar questioned. “How is other dark wine different from the wine of dreams?”

“The wine of dreams is one of several vintages allegedly produced by the same growers,” Albrecht said, uneasily, “but the others are even rarer, and cater to more exotic tastes.”

“My father seems to think that dark wine really is evil,” Reinmar said, hoping to provoke further revelations.

“Your father has never tasted it,” Albrecht retorted, with a sigh. “Perhaps he is wise, although I have never admired that narrow kind of wisdom. It is as well that he has kept you clear of it, if there are witch hunters abroad. Luther might be a stronger man today if it had never passed his lips, but I cannot regret the visions I obtained from it. I am a scholar through and through and I have always been willing to pay a price for insight and inspiration. The witch hunter will find nothing here if he comes calling, and my crimes, if crimes they were, are too distant now to interest him. If you see Wirnt again, tell him that I would be glad to see him—but beg him to be careful, for all our sakes. You had best go now. If honest men are not abed when they should be it excites suspicion, and I dare say that you have duties to perform by day.”

“I have,” Reinmar agreed, dolefully. He had hoped to learn more, but he did not have the time.

“Come again, when this is over and done with. Your father disapproves of me, I know, but we are kin and he thinks worse of me than I deserve.” Albrecht stood up as he spoke, and Reinmar stood too, allowing himself to be ushered back to the door.

Reinmar removed the bar himself, although he had seen that the old man handled it without difficulty. “I will come again,” he promised. “I’ll bring news, when there is more to bring.”

“Be careful,” Albrecht advised. “Can you find your way by starlight? The moons are but crescents, alas.”

“I have good eyes,” Reinmar assured him, “and there will be light enough in the streets, once I am among the houses again.”

He took the advice he had been given, and trod carefully until he was sure of his way—and even then he took pains to move discreetly, lest there was anyone nearby who had been told to stand watch and take note of his passing. He saw no one, but the trees were dense enough to conceal a dozen inquisitive watchers.

When he arrived back home the house seemed quiet. His ascent to the first floor window was as awkward as the descent, but he contrived to wriggle through the narrow window-frame without doing overmuch damage to his jerkin.

One of the servants had set a lamp beside the bed, although the wick had been compressed so tightly that the blue flame was hardly brighter than the starlight outside. Reinmar had already decided to go straight to his bed, so he did not bother to turn up the light—but he had barely knelt down to unfasten his shoes when he heard soft footfalls on the floor above.

Reinmar’s first thought was that it must be Godrich or one of the other servants, but he moved to the door nevertheless, then slipped outside into the corridor in the hope that he might be better placed to hear. He closed the door behind him to cut off the glimmer of the light and held himself perfectly still while he listened hard.

The quality of the shuffling steps changed as whoever was abroad reached the head of the staircase leading down to the first floor, and Reinmar deduced from the sound that whoever was coming down was less sure of his footing than any of the servants would have been. A servant about his business would, in any case, have been carrying a candle—and this person was not.

Reinmar did not know what to do. If he stayed where he was, outside his bedroom door, the intruder—if it was an intruder—would have to pass by him to get to the stair which led down to the shop. In all probability, the man—if it were a man—would walk right into him. He was tempted to call out and wake the household, but did not like to do so while he had no idea what might be happening, so he waited while the footsteps approached.

He did not move, but he could hardly stop breathing, and the footfalls stopped abruptly while the other was still two paces away from Reinmar’s station. There was a windowslit at the far end of the corridor, but the faint light that filtered through it was insufficient to let him make out a shadow unless or until the other placed himself directly in line with it, and the man seemed instead to be pressing himself against the wall, using it to guide him.

When he could bear the suspense no longer, Reinmar said: “Who’s there?” He felt direly foolish, for he was hardly likely to obtain a meek reply if the other had no right to be where he was, but it would have been worse to leap upon the other and engage in a tussle if it turned out to be Godrich or Gottfried.

The reply he actually obtained was an urgent “Shh!”—a syllable which was inadequate to give him any clue as to the accent of the voice. Within a second or two, though, the sound was followed by urgent action, as Reinmar felt hands groping for his neck. Fearful that he was about to be strangled he tried to wrestle, but the other man was much stronger than he, and within three seconds he was tightly held, with a hand clamped over his mouth.

“No need to wake the servants, cousin,” a voice hissed in his ear. “The fewer people know that I was here the better. Where’s the door of your room?”

The hand relaxed to permit him to reply, although it remained poised to reassert its grip if he should try to call out.

“We have only to step to the side, Cousin Wirnt,” Reinmar assured his captor, extending his free hand to push the door inwards.

Wirnt bundled him through it, then let him go. After the darkness of the corridor the lamplight did not seem so dim, although it lent an eerie tint to the dark man’s features. “Who told you my name?” he demanded.

“Great-Uncle Albrecht,” Reinmar told him. “Did my grandfather not tell you that I had gone to warn him?”

“Uncle Luther told me far less than I had hoped,” said Wirnt, bitterly. “He’s scared half to death, perhaps because von Spurzheim still has your father. How did they catch up with me so soon? That barge must have been even slower that it seemed, and von Spurzheim must have hired horses so that he and his favourites could ride ahead of the troop. Do you know how many locks there are between here and Holthusen?”

Reinmar knew exactly how many locks there were between Eilhart and Holthusen—the taming of the river’s flow was a great source of pride in the town—but he did not bother to number them. “You must go,” he said. “Great-Uncle Albrecht said that he would be glad to see you in other circumstances, but that he cannot give you what you seek or tell you what you want to know. If you go up into the hills you will find it exceedingly easy to lose yourself. When the witch hunter has gone there will be time enough to renew old acquaintances.”

“To renew old acquaintances,” the dark man repeated, with a sneer in his voice. “That is not why I came, cousin—nor did I come to hear nonsense about secret passes to Bretonnia. I must make contact with the vintagers, for their sake as well as mine. Vaedecker’s platoon is the advance detachment of a much larger company, and von Spurzheim’s spies are already abroad in the region. There has been treason in Marienburg and the authorities there know far too much—more than 1, and more than your grandfather is yet prepared to admit.”

“You are not safe here,” Reinmar said, stubbornly. “And while you are here, neither are we. You must go.”

Wirnt’s expression was twisted with anger as well as anxiety, and for a moment Reinmar thought he would refuse—but then he relaxed. “Aye,” he muttered. “So I must. Will you come down with me, to let me out and bar the door behind me? I climbed up the same way I watched you climb down, but I nearly got caught half way in and half way out of the window, and I wouldn’t care to try it again.”

“With pleasure,” Reinmar assured him, insincerely, as he turned to pick up the lamp. “I hope you won’t take it amiss if I say that I hope I shall not see you again for quite some time.”

The other man laughed dryly. “No, cousin,” he said, as he followed Reinmar out of the room. “I won’t take it amiss. Now that I’ve seen Uncle Luther I know how the land lies—but don’t think that this affair will be over when you bar the door behind me. Von Spurzheim won’t stop searching, and it won’t be easy to convince him that none of you can point him in the right direction. You’ll be carefully watched, so you’d best not put a foot wrong.”

“How can I,” Reinmar protested, as he made his way to the shop door, “when I know nothing?”

“That might not save you,” Wirnt said, while he waited for the bar to be removed. “When witch hunts begin, all kinds of old resentments surface. Your neighbours might be denouncing all three of you as addicts of the wine and active sorcerers even as we speak. You might soon have to make new estimates as to who your friends are—and you might regret your rudeness to me.”

Reinmar decided then that he did not like his cousin Wirnt, and regretted that he had accidentally shown him a way into the house—a way that he could obviously use in spite of his generous girth.

“We are honest tradesmen,” Reinmar said, stiffly, as he held the door open to let out his unwelcome visitor.

“I’ll be sure to remember that,” Wirnt promised—but the promise was a sneer, ill-befitting a man who had just exposed his kin to danger, and had refused to warn them when he had the chance, because they could not give him what he sought. Reinmar watched him until he had vanished into the night, and then took himself swiftly to bed.

Tired as he was, he could not sleep. It seemed to him that within the space of a few hours his whole world had been turned upside-down. Everything was different: his father, his grandfather, Eilhart and the wine trade. Every one of them had seemed so straightforward when the day dawned, dull and settled and secure. Now, they had all exposed to his sideways glance the suggestion of a darker underside, as ominous as it was mysterious. How could that be factored into his life? And how could it be factored into his dreams? Was there hope in this sudden upsurge of mystery as well as danger? Was there opportunity as well as threat?

Of one thing he was certain: he must discover more. And he must not do so meekly, waiting for others to tell him what they cared to when they cared to do it. He must work on his own account, with his own aims and his own ambitions. He was a child no longer, and he must reach his own accommodation with the enigmatic wine of dreams and its even darker kin. He would take nothing as given, no man’s word as final. He must be his own man now—but he must discover more, if he was to be the kind of man he was anxious to become.