“It was not my fault,” was what he said first, and he was quick to amplify
his claim. “I had no intention of causing injury to anyone, my father least of
all—but he would not give me the wine. It was a purely private dispute,
between father and son, that would never have turned to bloodshed if those who
had no right to interfere had not thrown themselves into the quarrel. First this
maniac arrives, calling my father brother, insisting that my father should take
the draught himself. He was the one who forced me, in the end, to draw my sword,
precisely because he had none of his own, and required a show of force to be
controlled—except, of course, that he was too furious to be controlled, even
by the sight of a naked blade. In time, I dare say, he would have seen sense—but then this perfect fool arrives, no sooner seeing my blade than he draws his
own, and his opinion is that no one should touch the wine. Even then, we might
have settled the argument as civilised men, if he would only have consented to sheath his blade while we talked—all the more
so given that the real object of his ire was this creature that he called father—but he insisted on keeping the weapon handy.
“As soon as I realised the full truth of the situation I became conciliatory—a peacemaker, through and through—but my attempts to calm the situation were
fruitless. There was a point, I assure you, when I almost ceased to care whether
my father let me have the little measure of wine he had, because I realised how
negligible it was by comparison with the other supply—the one that my Uncle
Luther swore that he had hidden in the cellar. Far better, I told them, that we
should all join forces in order that one or two of us could move to intercept
the gypsy girl before she could make much headway southwards, while someone
waited here for your arrival, in case you had managed to retain the prize. It
was all so very simple… so very simple… except that your father and his
father could not be quiet, and Albrecht simply would not surrender that trivial
draught. And so it came to blows, with the result that you see. I wounded them
both, I will confess, but it was not my fault.”
Reinmar listened until Wirnt had finished, because he knew that he had to
understand what had happened, but as soon as the torrent of words sputtered and
dried up, he addressed his grandfather. “Is he dead?” he asked, meaning
Albrecht.
“Not yet,” Luther replied, dolefully, meaning that it would take a miracle to
save him.
“Father?” was Reinmar’s next enquiry.
“It’s a shallow cut for all the gore,” Gottfried reported, grimly. “I won’t
die, but I can’t deny that I’m weak and all-but-useless. If anyone kills him, it
will have to be you. If you weren’t my son, I’d say have at him and the best of
luck, but if you have what he wants, it might save a deal of trouble if you gave
it to him and let him go.”
“Do you have what I need?” Wirnt wanted to know.
“Yes I have,” Reinmar said, seeing no need at all to prove it. “Perhaps you
should try to take it, if you dare.”
Luther smiled at that, but the smile was humourless.
“This is the family business, after all,” Wirnt said. “Even now, there is no
reason for us to be enemies. I did not mean to hurt him. Even now, what I want
is reconciliation, and harmony. I need the nectar, but once I have it, I am more
than willing to make treaties and contracts. Von Spurzheim is dead, and half his entourage.
There will be soldiers in Eilhart for years to come, and witch hunters in the
hills, but nothing fundamental has changed. There are other battles to be
fought, other crusades to be mounted, and the soldiers and witch hunters will
see soon enough that they will be more profitably employed elsewhere. We are
businessmen, are we not? Let us behave like honest tradesmen.”
“If you can kill him,” Gottfried Wieland said to his son, “I’d be obliged if
you’d do it soon.”
“I believe that I can,” Reinmar said—but his opportunity to try had already
vanished. It had been easy enough for him to enter the house unheard even while
its occupants were temporarily silent. It was even easier for those who had come
after him. He had not the slightest idea that anyone was behind him until he
felt an arm slide over his shoulder like a snake and the edge of a dagger laid
upon his windpipe.
It was not the man who held the knife to his throat who spoke, though; it was
the woman who had come in behind him and now stepped past him.
“My son is right in what he says,” she said, “no matter how far his actions
have put him in the wrong. No matter what disasters have caught us up or how
badly we are hurt, we are a civilised family. Those of us who are scholars have
been long estranged from those of us who are tradesmen, but that was always
petty foolishness. Our aim now should be reconciliation.”
Valeria did what no one else had dared to do, placing herself casually at the
very centre of the room, so that she could look regally around at all its other
occupants, drawn back against its various walls.
All Reinmar could see of the man behind him was the sleeve of his robe, but
he guessed that it was Brother Noel before he heard the murmured instruction to
drop his weapon. He had no choice but to obey.
Valeria did not seem quite as young as she had when Reinmar had last seen
her, although she was still more vibrant than she had been when he first caught
sight of her.
“I thought you had gone to the secret valley,” Reinmar said bitterly. “The
attack on Eilhart was supposedly not your concern.”
“I had a dream,” was the lady’s reply. She seemed to think it adequate.
Luther stood up and turned his back on his unconscious brother. “Did you come
for me?” he asked.
“She came for me,” Wirnt was quick to say. “I am her son.”
“I think you will find that she came for the nectar,” Reinmar said quietly.
“I did not come to hear you play guessing games,” Valeria informed them,
impatiently. “I am the only one here who knows what this is all about, and the
only one who knows how matters should proceed. I am the trusted one—the only
trusted one.”
Reinmar was surprised, but only slightly, by the distinct note of anxiety in
her voice. She had been in control of the situation when she had last visited
the house, but she knew that things were different now. “None of you is trusted,
or ever was, or ever shall be,” he said, boldly. “Yours is a game in which trust
has no part, and lust is everything.”
The dagger was drawn more insistently against his throat, but the edge did
not break the skin.
“Now the whelp knows everything!” Valeria exclaimed, raising her hand in a
languid gesture of contempt. “He is his father’s son, it seems. What a fool you
were, Luther, to subject yourself to such as these.”
“Give them what they want, Reinmar,” Gottfried said. “They have all the
advantages now. Give them what they want and take Marguerite back to Eilhart. I
can walk behind you, while they all find their own road to Hell. My father has
had his last chance. From now on, we are our own masters, without obligation.”
Reinmar knew that he was speaking hopefully, trying to persuade himself that all
might yet be well.
Reinmar knew, however, that all was not well.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why didn’t you bring the nectar when you had
the chance, grandfather? And why did Marcilla put it back where you found it?
Why does it keep coming back to me?”
“You stole it,” Noel murmured in his ear, jut loud enough for the others to
hear. “Thieves must be careful what they steal, lest the objects of their desire
should steal them in return. You are ours now, Master Wieland, whether you know
it or not.”
“That’s a lie!” Gottfried was quick to say. “All of these are slaves already,
but you are not. You should have smashed the phial when you found it, or spilled
the liquor into the town sewer to mingle with all the blood it has spilled. Even
now, it is not too late.”
“But it is,” Brother Noel insisted.
“Be quiet,” Valeria said, to Gottfried as well as the monk. “I say again, we
should not be quarrelling over this. This is a family affair, after all—I
include the girl, of course, since she seems so enthusiastic to join our little
clan. What you have in your pouch, Reinmar, is what has brought us together
after so long apart, and may keep us together in spite of our cuts and bruises.
It can make us strong again, after far too many years of weakness.”
“I fought last night to defend the town against monsters out of a nightmare,”
Reinmar told her. “I saw my friends killed, and barely escaped death myself. Do
you think I am ready now to become part of that nightmare?”
“What better time could there be?” Valeria countered. “But that is not what
anyone asks of you, Reinmar. No one here was fighting on the other side last
night. We had better things to do with our time, and with our youth. The young
do not know the value of youth, Reinmar, but I can assure you that I know it as
well as anyone else alive. You might think I use it recklessly, but you will
understand one day—as Albrecht understood, though he tried so hard to forget,
and as Luther understands again, though he could not always remember it. We all
know that it is best to stand aside from the battle that is mundane existence,
let alone the kind of battle that you fought last night. Perhaps it is good that
you did that, because you need to learn—but there is so much more that you
might learn, if you would only seize the opportunity.”
“This is nonsense,” Wirnt said, impatiently. “You may play whatever games you
want, mother, but I came here to get the wine of dreams for myself, and I still
mean to have it. I can take it, if I must.” He stepped forward, raising his arm
slightly, to remind everyone that he still held Reinmar’s sword, and that it was
by far the best weapon on display.
The forward step was a mistake, because it brought him close enough to his
mother to allow her to reach out and take his wrist—the right wrist—in her
own delicate hand. The casual act could have been mistaken for a gesture of affection and reassurance, but
it was not.
Wirnt immediately tried to break free, but he could not, and while he
struggled, his face grew somewhat older and the grey in his hair increased its
dominion over the black. Flesh seemed to melt away from his overgenerous belly,
leaving him almost as thin as his father had been. In the meantime, Valeria
recovered the tiny fraction of her renewed youth that she had lost since she
drank from the flask that Wirnt still held in his left hand.
“Don’t be silly, Wirnt,” Valeria said. Then, to Reinmar, she said: “Sons can
be so unruly, but their mothers always have the measure of them, even when their
fathers retain no authority at all.”
Reinmar heard Marguerite’s muffled gasp of astonishment, but no one else
seemed even faintly surprised by what had happened. As she had openly declared,
Valeria was the one who best understood what this was all about, and how it
should go—but there was audible anxiety in every sentence that she spoke, no matter
how contemptuous the words might be. She knew how the confrontation ought to go,
but she was far from certain that it would.
“I will not be your apprentice, lady,” he said.
“Nor I yours,” she replied. “But there is a business to be run and a trade to
be organised, and it requires a trusted man. You are a trusted man, now, in
every sense of the word.”
“My father runs the business,” Reinmar said. “I have no ambition to replace
him before he is ready to be replaced.”
“Take out the nectar, Reinmar,” Valeria said. “Let us all see what this is
about.”
“Don’t,” Gottfried said—but Reinmar knew that there was no point in leaving
it where it was. He took out the phial, and held it up.
“There is more than enough for all of us to take a sip,” Valeria observed.
“The girl too, if she will. It will calm us all, and smooth our negotiations. It
will revive those who need reviving—it may even have power enough to save Albrecht’s life.”
It occurred to Reinmar when the sorceress spoke of taking “a sip” that even
she had no idea how powerful the nectar was. Luther knew, if he still had enough
self-possession to know anything at all, and Noel presumably knew, but Wirnt and
his mother did not.
“The last thing I need is medicine of that kind,” Gottfried growled. “I shall
not drink, and nor shall my son. Nor will Marguerite.”
“I’ll gladly take your share,” Luther told his son roughly. “Gladly.”
Wirnt opened his mouth as if to advance his own claim, but nothing came out
but a croak. He seemed astonished by his sudden weakness, appalled by the
consciousness that he had tried to speak to some effect but had only been able
to utter a wordless sound that might have been the dying breath of a carrion
crow.
Reinmar was still certain that he had never been meant to find his way into
the underworld, but he understood now that not everything that he had done there
had been his own move in the continuing game. When he had taken up the phial he
had yielded to temptation, and had never been free of it since. Even this was
not an opportunity to free himself from that temptation, but only to postpone
the conflict until another time. He was marked now, and the wine of dreams would
follow him wherever he went, because he had penetrated its most precious secret.
The events of the previous night might only be a sample of things to come, if he
would not join Valeria’s conspiracy.
Valeria was smiling now, but her smile was uneasy. “This is a great day,” she
said, although the falseness of her confidence was obvious. “The reunion of a
family; the healing of wounds old and new; the beginning of a new enterprise.”
“I will not be part of it,” Gottfried insisted. “Reinmar—”
“Don’t be a fool, Gottfried,” Luther interrupted. “You were young and
stubborn when you set your face against this trade—as young as Reinmar is now—but you’re not so young now. You need the wine more than any of us, else
you’ll die screaming when that wound turns septic.”