The statement was, of course, absurd. Gottfried Wieland knew every jug, jar,
cask and flagon in his cellars, and was not a man to tolerate the existence of
hidden corners or unevaluated stock. If Gottfried had given von Spurzheim
permission to search, his intention must be to clear away any slight shadow of
doubt that might remain in the witch hunter’s mind as to his innocence of any
dealings in “dark wine”.
“I will show you the way,” Reinmar said. He did, and lit all the lamps that
were grouped at the foot of the stone stairs so that every last corner of the
mazy cellars could be illuminated at will. He stayed to watch, as Gottfried
would have wanted him to do, while the five men prowled the multitudinous racks, removing the
stoppers from stone jars so that they might sniff the contents and turning the
spigots on wooden casks to let drops fall onto the palms of their hands. They
were not wasteful, nor did their tentative sampling of the produce lead to the
least intoxication.
The search would have been quicker had all the wines in the cellars been kept
in transparent bottles, but only the finest wines were ever dignified thus, and
usually only in the shop itself. Glass was too precious a commodity to be
wasted, and customers who were slow in returning their empties for reuse were
always treated with prejudice. Gottfried Wieland was well known for his
sternness in keeping count of such errors of omission, and for the infallibility
of his memory.
Machar von Spurzheim insisted that Reinmar open every cupboard and chest,
while Sergeant Vaedecker used the hilt of a dagger to rap on every wall,
listening raptly for any hollow echo. The whole process lasted nearly two hours,
but at the end of it the visitors seemed satisfied.
“Your stores seem to be running low,” von Spurzheim commented, as Reinmar led
the way back up the stairs, “and yet your casks and jars are clustered together.
There is a deal of empty space.”
“That is true, sir,” Reinmar agreed. “We have made space to take in new
stock. Godrich and I will be setting out on a buying trip in nine days time. We
will take the wagon south into the hills, visiting a dozen vineyards, and we
shall return fully laden.”
“Who is Godrich?” the witch hunter wanted to know.
“My father’s steward. One of the manservants will come with us to tend the
horses and mount guard on our money and stock.”
“Will one be enough?” Vaedecker inquired solicitously. “Are there not gypsies
in the hills, and brigands?”
“My father has made at least a hundred expeditions of this sort,” Reinmar
told him, “and never lost a cargo. There has been petty pilfering by
sneak-thieves, for which the gypsies may or may not have been responsible, but
they tend to get the blame for every misfortune hereabouts whether it is theirs
or not. There are always tales of brigands, and sometimes of monsters too, but
my father says that it is all nonsense.”
“If only it were,” von Spurzheim said gloomily. “These are bad times, and
there is evil abroad in every corner of the Empire. Everyone to whom I speak
hereabouts assures me that Eilhart is as good and safe a place as could ever be
imagined, but my experience is that one of evil’s favourite tricks is to lull
potential victims into a false sense of security.”
By the time this speech had been delivered the party was back in the shop,
and the sergeant had already unlatched the door. The night air that gusted in
when he opened it was not unduly chilly, but it cleared away the lingering
fustiness of the day in a matter of seconds.
“Thank you, Master Wieland,” von Spurzheim said. “You have calmed our fears.”
“When shall I see my father again?” Reinmar asked.
“Soon,” the witch hunter assured him. “I have a few more questions to ask,
but he will be back by daybreak. We understand how anxious he is to resume his
everyday routine.”
As soon as the door was closed behind them, Reinmar went down to the cellars
to extinguish the lanterns, then put out the lights in the shop. He was now so
impatient to consult his grandfather that he ran up the steps to the topmost
floor of the house, where Luther Wieland had one of the rooms under the eaves.
The room was lit by a single candle, which one of the maidservants had
brought with the old man’s supper. The hour was so late that Luther should have
blown it out and settled down to sleep, but he had heard too much commotion and
had doubtless been informed that soldiers had been in and out of the shop
earlier in the day.
“What’s going on?” he said, as soon as Reinmar appeared. “Why does no one
bother to tell me what’s happening in my own house?” The fact that Luther’s
supper-tray was on the table by his bed suggested that he must have received
some news, but whatever the kitchen maid had told him had only increased his
curiosity.
“We’ve all been busy,” Reinmar told him. “Godrich is down at the warehouse on
the quay and my father is at the Burgomaster’s house. I was in the cellars,
watching soldiers and a witch hunter while they searched.”
“What was the witch hunter searching for?” Luther wanted to know—but the
guarded tone of his voice suggested that he probably knew very well.
“Dark wine,” Reinmar answered, watching closely to see how Luther would react
to the phrase. He was disappointed. The old man’s wrinkled features seemed quite
impassive, and his eyes grew no narrower. His white hair was neatly tucked away
within a black woollen cap, and his nightshirt had been freshly laundered that
day, so his whole appearance was uncommonly neat and his manner equally crisp.
His gnarled hands lay quite still upon the coverlet, the fingers relaxed.
“They found none, of course,” Luther said.
“Of course,” Reinmar echoed. “Nor did they expect to—unlike the man who
came to the shop this afternoon. The witch hunter appears to be chasing him,
although he did not tell me what the fellow is supposed to have done and the man
would not tell us his own news because he thought we were being unhelpful. There
is wild talk of necromancers from the Cursed Marshes and daemonologists from the
Howling Hills, but the man seemed perfectly ordinary to me—except, of course,
that he claimed to be your nephew.”
Luther did not seem surprised by that either. The servants of the household
were obviously better informed than they had any right to be, and the kitchen
maid clearly had not hesitated to share her knowledge with the man who still
desired to be thought of as her ultimate master.
“Did you tell the witch hunter that the other man claimed to be my nephew?”
Luther asked.
“No,” said Reinmar, “but he will find out eventually. If they find him at
Great-Uncle Albrecht’s house the witch hunter will come back here again, and his
men might not be so careful to avoid spillage next time.”
“Albrecht’s got more sense than to keep the boy in his house,” Luther assured
him. “He’ll find some sort of hidey-hole for him, if he can’t persuade him to go
away.”
“According to my father,” Reinmar observed, “Albrecht never had a son.”
“I never found it convenient, let alone rewarding, to tell your father
everything,” Luther admitted. “He has the kind of mind which cannot tolerate
overmuch confusion. You, on the other hand, are probably cursed with far too
much imagination. Yes, Albrecht had a son, although he was never wed. As to
whether this man is really him… that’s another question. Did you tell him
where to find Albrecht?”
“My father did. Was he wrong?”
“No. If he is who he says he is, I suppose Albrecht might be glad to see
him.”
Reinmar took note of his grandfather’s use of “might”, but he had more urgent
matters on his mind than the likely emotions of his Great-Uncle Albrecht on
being confronted by his long-lost bastard son.
“What’s dark wine, grandfather?” Reinmar asked. “Father says that we used to
stock it, twenty years ago.”
“So we did,” Luther admitted. “A very tidy profit we made from it, too. A
delightful vintage, taken in moderation—although there were few men hereabouts
with pockets deep enough to take it in anything but extreme moderation. In times
long gone it had generated a healthy westward flow of Marienburger gold, but
that flow stuttered in the confusion that followed the secession and never fully
recovered. My father never tired of telling me how that storm in a soup ladle had
ruined everything. There was still a demand, of course, but the chain of supply
was disrupted.
“The dark wine became a pawn in a political game, charged with being an agent
of evil on account of the dreams it nurtured. According to the priests of law it
stimulated an appetite for unnatural luxury that ought to be stamped out. Can
you believe that? All wine intoxicates, and all liquor stimulates an appetite
for more—and why should anyone object? Dreams enrich life, no matter what
hard-faced men like your father may think, and while there never was a man who
did not take delight in luxury how can anyone possibly charge luxury with being
unnatural? Believe me, Reinmar, there is no folly like the folly of excessive
reason!”
Luther’s voice had grown faint with effort, and his head sank back upon the
pillow, but Reinmar was determined to hear more while he had the chance. He
poured water from the pitcher beside the bed into his grandfather’s cup, and put
it to the old man’s cracked lips.
“Thank you,” Luther said. “What a curse age is! Had I but known, I’d have…”
He broke off guiltily, as if he had almost said something forbidden.
Reinmar did not want to press him too hard, while there was a tale he was
prepared to tell. It was difficult to be patient, but he knew that he had to get the old man talking again, and hope that the flow
of his conversation would regain its impetus. So he put the cup to the old man’s
mouth again, and lied.
“It’s all right, grandfather,” he said. “There’s all the time in the world.”
“At any rate,” Luther continued, when he could, “attempts were made downriver
to stamp out the trade in dark wine, and we found it politic to get out of it.
There was still demand in Marienburg, and we might have taken a good profit from
the service of that demand, always provided that we exercised discretion, but
your father never had any sense of adventure. If I , hadn’t fallen ill, I’d have
taken the chance, but your father saw things differently. He’d married, and he
intended to start a family. He knew that I took a little of the wine myself
occasionally, but that only made him more determined. Now, I suppose, he’ll be
more convinced than before that he was right.”
“He told the witch hunter that there was nowhere within ten leagues where the
wine could be obtained,” Reinmar observed. “Was he right?”
“How should I know, stuck fast to my bed as I am? There was none for me, at
any rate, and I doubt that Albrecht’s fared much better for all the sharpness of
his thirst. I never knew where the vintage was trampled and stored—and it was
usually bottled before it was delivered into my hands—but the fact that its
producers used our family as agents suggests that Eilhart lay on the most
convenient route to the Reik. If the dark wine and its kin no longer use the Schilder as a conduit, they must use another route, but how
close it lies I cannot say. If certain rumours were true which said that the
wines came from Bretonnia by means of a secret pass through the mountains, its
makers may have had to go twenty or thirty leagues east or west in search of
another such pass, but I never trusted that kind of talk. I always suspected
that the source lay closer to home—in which case the present distribution
route probably passes within a day’s walk of the town.”
“As close as Great-Uncle Albrecht’s house, perhaps?” Reinmar suggested.
That obtained a reaction from the old man, whose right hand twitched before
forming a fist.
“Not as close as that, I think,” Luther said, in a low voice. “Albrecht was
never cut out for the wine trade, and when I saw him last he certainly didn’t
have the look of a regular drinker.”
“Why wasn’t he cut out for the trade?” Reinmar wanted to know. He had grave
misgivings about his own suitability for a life in any sort of trade. “And what
look does a regular drinker of the dark wine have?”
Luther chose to answer the first question and ignore the second. “Albrecht had
no talent for moderation,” he said dourly. “The wine business may not require
the iron discipline your father brings to it, but it does demand moderation.”
“Is that why you quarrelled—because his drinking was eating into the
profits?”
“Is that what your father told you?” the old man parried. The conversation
had obviously strayed too far into matters of which Luther was supposedly
forbidden—presumably by Gottfried—to speak.
“Father never tells me anything that is not strictly related to the conduct
of the business,” Reinmar answered, with more than a trace of bitterness. “It
was a guess.”
“Not such a bad guess,” Luther admitted. “It was far more complicated, of
course, but that was part of it. Albrecht always had a keen thirst, for wisdom
as well as wine. He had ambitions to be a scholar, and more. Eilhart was never
enough for him. He wanted to be a city gentleman, but his passion for prosperity
far outstripped the patience that might have delivered it.”
“Is it such a terrible thing to want something more than Eilhart has to
offer?” Reinmar asked, hesitantly.
“Perhaps not,” Luther replied, guardedly. “But there are no reliable short
cuts to prosperity, any more than there are reliable short cuts to wisdom.”
“And that, no doubt, is why the dutiful burgers and housewives of Eilhart are
so smug in their ignorance, their small-mindedness and the extreme urgency of
their desire to obtain full measure from the local tradesmen,” Reinmar said.
Luther cackled. Reinmar could remember a day when the old man’s laugh had
been far more robust, rumbling up from the belly instead of rattling in the
throat, but time had taken its steady toll of the slowly-withering flesh. The
family physician had despaired of finding any treatment that would even slow the
progress of the sickness that was gradually but relentlessly consuming him.