The Ravens’ Banquet

by Clifford Beal

  “They told us the truth,” I whispered. “It’s a wood furnace. They are charcoalmakers as they did say.”

  Christoph shook his head and growled from deep in his throat.

  “Nay, I won’t buy that. There’s more here than meets the eye. There must be.”

  He moved off anew and I tried to hold him back, my heart pounding with fear that we were about to be discovered. But rather than shake off my grip, he in turn grabbed my shoulder and dragged me with him, stumbling. The wood swirled about me as we ran forward, and Christoph was cursing as he went. Cursing at me, at the women, and at his own disbelief.

  “Charcoal makers! By Christ, I’ll not be so easily fooled!”

  And then the axes fell silent, and a cry went up. Christoph released his grip and drew his sword while I stood helplessly empty-handed, four paces behind him. On our left I spied two of the sisters closing, their crossbows raised. Facing us, the others came forward, Rosemunde at their head.

  They were nearly upon us when Rosemunde raised her hand.

  “Let them be! They are curious to know what we work here. So then, they shall see.”

  Christoph tensed for a moment, but I saw him soften and, as bold as you like, he sheathed his sword with a flourish. I stepped forward hesitantly to join him.

  A tall, blonde-haired and haggard woman spoke out to Rosemunde.

  “No, it is not right. Oma has not given her word on it. They must not be shown.”

  “Oma does know of this and has given her word to me, Maria,” replied Rosemunde. “These two are not going back to their army. Ask them.”

  Maria fell silent and I plucked up my courage.

  “We meant you no harm, Rosemunde. But things here are more than passing strange. Is it not reasonable to see what goes on in this place?”

  Christoph glanced at me as I spoke, his lips curling in a furtive smile.

  Rosemunde nodded. “It is so.”

  I began to move forward towards the wood furnace, when Rosemunde suddenly held her arm out, bidding me to halt.

  “And you,” she said, fingering Christoph, “Are you prepared to rest easy?”

  “Aye,” said Christoph quietly. “I do believe I can do just that.”

  Rosemunde nodded and we moved forward again. The women slowly returned to their labours and I began to understand, as I watched, just what they had fashioned in the clearing.

  Christoph walked around the great fire mound, prodding it here and there. Rosemunde watched him as we two stood together.

  “It’s for making charcoal isn’t it? I have seen the same at home in England,” I offered.

  “It is for just that,” she replied looking at me and smiling.

  “That poses more questions to my mind, than it does answer,” I said, sitting on the ground. My legs had grown weak from our pursuit and I was starving for some food.

  “I don’t dispute that, Auslander,” she replied. “But you are in such a haste to find things out, like your comrade there.”

  She too, sat upon the ground next to me.

  “For me,” she continued, “it’s a great question as to how a foreigner like you came to be in this land and in this wood. Don’t you think that such a thing is just as strange to us?”

  “I have come here to fight the Emperor,” I replied, “but as you can see, he has had a better time fighting me.”

  Rosemunde laughed. It was a free laugh, no bravado or mockfulness. But quickly, she recovered herself and the hardness returned to her.

  “Why can’t you believe that we labour here to earn our keep, burning this wood every day, making our charcoal and taking it to the town after a fortnight? Is that such a strange thing to see?”

  “Not of itself,” I replied, “but here, alone, armed, no menfolk about, far from village or town, these things pose some good questions. It is, to my mind, not a natural existence.”

  Smoke blew over our heads as we talked and Christoph finally settled down to join us, listening intently.

  “We have had other lives, all of us here. Troubled, filled with pain… and loss,” she said, looking from me to Christoph. “Here, together, we have peace and we have the Oma to guide us. There is no other need.”

  “And what of food?” asked Christoph. “By God, I could eat near upon anything I hunger so.”

  Rosemunde stood up.

  “You can have all you like, if you work for it first. There’s the woodpile.” And she pointed out a tangle of broken boughs and logs.

  And so we set to work, cutting the firewood and stoking the furnace. Christoph swore under his breath as he heaved the logs. I was sure he didn’t believe all that had been said and in truth, nor did I. Much effort went on here, seemingly for very little profit. Rosemunde spoke to me from time to time as we worked, telling me of their hard times in the village they had left. She spoke of the mean-spirited burghers of Goslar, of the coming of Tilly’s men, of the rape of their friends, the theft of their possessions, and the impressment of their menfolk. All tales that rang of truth. Had I myself not sinned the very deeds she lamented so?

  Toward the midday, we halted and ate bread and smoked meat, cut from a haunch. Christoph chewed his meal in silence, sitting off from the rest, and I worried that he was hatching some new stratagem that would lead to no good. I wished to know more of this small band, to tease more intelligence out of them without causing alarm.

  “How long have you lived out here?” I asked Rosemunde. “And do you not go back to your village to live when the weather grows foul?”

  She told me that they had worked in the forest since late the previous winter and that at first they travelled freely between village and forest to do their work. Yet after their men were taken, the Oma told them what they should do, and they followed her. Neighbours gossiped and grew ever more suspicious of these women who would not stay and obey their fathers or brothers.

  As spring turned to summer, they found themselves persecuted for their belief in the old woman’s wisdom and for pursuing their labours in the wood, and so, only returned infrequently to drag in charcoal to sell and buy up what they could not obtain themselves. Oma was a Cunning Woman who could heal and tell portends, no more and no less, she told me. But others spoke ill of her. Their own children they left with aunts or uncles or husband’s family, until these too were denied them by their distrustful kin.

  I said little as Rosemunde spun out her tale, not knowing what was true and what was not. Yet she spoke to me like one confessing a great burden, her voice sombre and laden with regret. And though I was moved by her words, I was not in whole convinced. The Oma I had seen, true enough, and the hag froze my blood. If I thought that the crone meant ill, it could well be believed that any townsman might also.

  Mayhaps she needed me to believe her and her sad circumstance. But Rosemunde had yet to tell us why she wished our help, but that she did so, was most plain.

  At length, she grew quiet, my manner betraying some lack of faith. The others had returned to their work by now, yet Rosemunde remained with me. Finally, she turned to me and spoke.

  “There is more to my story,” she said quietly, fixing me with a gaze to test my resolve. And she paused, wavering whether to bare her soul to me. Christoph, sharp-eared as ever, had crept back to my side.

  “Then tell us why you spared us. Tell us why Oma wishes for us to not leave you.”

  She looked at me hard again and said, “I will tell thee true, but it is a truth that will bind you both to this place.”

  “So be it,” said I.

  “I trust you not, woman,” said Christoph in earnest, “but we cannot now go back as we came. Tell us what you will.”

  “I will show you,” she said, nodding. And with a call to her sisters, all of us followed her deeper into the wood, and higher up the Kroeteberg.

  At last, we reached a ledge crowned by a giant oak, half-dead. The hillock upon which this tree had stood for many years now had crumbled and fallen partly away, revealing a snarled tangle of a
ncient roots. And beneath this, one could glimpse the rock that lay exposed as the earth had washed away.

  Rosemunde beckoned me and Christoph forward. We approached the hillock and looked upon an open wound in the forest floor. It was a crack as large as a man, lying underneath the tendrils of the oak. Black as pitch, the maw widened inside, smelling of damp and mouldy earth, like the grave.

  “What import is this?” I asked Rosemunde.

  Christoph bent down upon his knee and poked his head inside the cave.

  Rosemunde said nothing but reached down to a pile of rocks and stones, the excavations of the hillock, and picked up something.

  “Look upon this. What do you see?” she asked.

  Christoph swore loudly as he scrambled back to his feet, his sweaty, lean face animated anew.

  I looked at what she held up to me. It was a lump of stone, a lump that sparkled and shone, a speckled egg of rock. And silver danced within and about it, as bright as the trim on the King’s suit or a cathedral’s chalice.

  “Never have I seen the metal in its natural state,” I stammered at her, unable to take my eyes from the lump. “Yet, by Christ, it must be pure silver.”

  Rosemunde stooped down and ran her hand along the mouth of the hole in the earth.

  “This is our good Fortune given over to us. It is a rich lode that lies beneath our feet. A vein that the Duke would take from us quick as you like if he knew of its existence.”

  “Let us enter,” demanded Christoph, his greed working to a passion. “Let’s see the mine!”

  Rosemunde stood up again, dusting her hands on her skirt.

  “Would that any of us could,” she replied. “But it is two moons past since we last went down there. For some of the mine has fallen in and now is impassable.”

  “Rip me, woman!” cursed Christoph. “We shall dig now. Dig like badgers if we must to open it again.”

  “We have tried until our hands were bloodied, all in vain,” said Rosemunde. “The stones are most firmly settled in the hole and neither spade nor lever can move them.”

  I got down on all fours and struggled to look into the entrance.

  “There is something else we could hazard,” I said after a moment or two. “Something that could loosen these stones enough to pry them out. And I think I have a stratagem to make it so.”

  Rosemunde placed her hand on my back, a strangely gentle touch.

  “I know that you do. For Oma told me that the very day that you and your soldiers came upon us.”

  And it was then that Purpose was made apparent. Christoph and I were to be the means to an end.

  XII

  Fortuna Smiles

  September 1626

  “FOOL!” CRIED CHRISTOPH, as he snatched back the cartridge belt from my hand, the jumble of wooden powder flasks clacking in complaint. “We have but one firing piece left to us and these are the last of the charges. Would you leave us at their mercy?”

  “And what good is it!” I shot back at him, “They could have killed us days ago. If we but use the powder we may yet open the mine again. Have you a better plan?”

  Christoph looked at me and swore mightily. His hand gripped the leather belt fast, and as he cursed it clattered like a skeleton in his grasp.

  I made no effort to seize it back from him.

  I knew his greed led him by the nose. “This is a dangerous gamble,” he growled after the dark workings of his mind finally settled. “But… I shall see it your way… this time. Let it all be on your head and not mine.”

  I did not doubt that my scheme was harebrained. But even so, there was a chance that it would work. I tried not to think about what Christoph would do if it failed. We two were in uneasy alliance, each gauging how useful the one would be to the other. Neither of us knew enough of our situation to take the risk of going it alone. We may have held an understanding but we did not share trust. That was a commodity always in short supply and at no time more so than in the war.

  I gathered up what more I needed from the encampment and with Rosemunde and the others set out once again for the old oak. The sun was sitting low as we returned and I hurriedly began my work.

  First, Christoph and I wormed our way into the crevice, our legs protruding from out the surface. The taper that I held sputtered and singed my hair, so close was it to my face.

  “Shit!” cursed Christoph, “it’s all wedged fast. Nothing will free it.”

  I spied a space between two large stones that looked just large enough for the barrel of the carbine to fit into. “Here!” I cried. “This is where we shall set our little grenado.”

  Christoph grunted. “You’ve barely enough powder to make a fart, but we have come this far I guess. Let’s hazard it.”

  We pulled ourselves out and I retrieved the carbine from where I had leaned it against a tree. The sisters remained silent and apprehensive as I emptied each of the charges down the muzzle of the carbine. I could see them backing away down the hillock as I tapped each flask empty before setting to the next. Only Rosemunde stood close by, watching me, her face betraying nothing.

  I rammed a bit of wadding and two balls down the barrel and tamped the lot in. I could tell that a third of the piece was stuffed tightly with powder and Christoph looked at me shaking his head with disbelief. I tied one end of a long length of yarn about the trigger, picked up the carbine again and then carefully wriggled back into the hole.

  “Christoph! I need you to hold the taper for me to see.”

  He swore again and crawled in next to me. “You’ll blow us both to pieces with your cleverness,” he muttered as he struggled to hold the taper out before us. With all my might, I strove to push the carbine deep into the crack, even resorting to hammering the stock with a rock to drive it further down. Christoph winced with each blow.

  “Sweet Jesus! Must you whack it so? You might set if off!”

  I was shaking now, both with apprehension and excitement. “If I do not drive it deep it may not work at all.”

  At last, I could move it no more. “Now I must wind the lock and set the hammer.”

  “Then that you must do alone,” said Christoph quietly. And he stuck the taper into a crack and backed out of the hole.

  I fumbled to set the spanner into the lock, my fingers already cut and bleeding. The lock began to click tighter as I wound and wound. I could feel the sweat dripping down my sides as I grunted, arms stretched out in front of me. I exhaled and breathed in again, the smell strong in my nostrils of both damp earth and welling blood from my rock-ripped hands. Slowly, I pulled back the hammer, listened for it to click into place, and then, trying not to tremble, lifted my hand from the weapon. I prayed that it would hold until my head was out of the hole.

  I scrambled out feet first, careful not to tug upon the string. Crouching a few feet from the opening, I wiped my brow with my arm and looked at the others. They stood close by one another, silent and grim-faced. Rosemunde gave me a look and a nod. Christoph had settled on his haunches, back against a tree.

  “What are you waiting for?” he called up to me, grinning.

  I lay on my side, my arm propping me up, wrapped the string about both hands, and gave it a mighty pull.

  I was rewarded with a muffled thump and then the sound of earth and stone tearing through the canopy of leaves above. Shards rained down on us and the women cried out in alarm. Before the last piece fell to earth, Christoph and I ran back up the hillock to the crevice. It belched forth a pall of dust and acrid smoke and neither of us could see a thing. At length, it cleared and Rosemunde brought forth a torch to let us peer inside.

  The greatest of the stones lay cracked and broken clear through. With our hands and a bough from the old oak, we managed to lever the pieces out one by one. After a time, we had fashioned a hole big enough for a man to crawl down. Cool moist air rose up to me, stinking of mould.

  I told Rosemunde that we could pass through.

  “Then you may see what your work has opened anew,” sh
e replied, smiling at me in a curious way and for a moment I fancied she was luring me into a tomb from which I would not leave.

  “And I have to see this fabled mine for myself,” declared Christoph. “Here, give me that torch.”

  This time, feet first, we descended into the Earth’s wound, the light of day disappearing above us as we crawled down. Once through the crevice the cave opened wider, and I ended up slipping down vertically to the floor below, bits of shale and soil tinkling onto my breeches and boots. Christoph followed quickly behind and soon the two of us stood side by side in the narrow cave, our torch held aloft and illuminating a scene difficult to describe but not possible to forget.

  A long, grey, shimmering tendril snaked its way along the wall of the gallery of stone, thicker than a tree trunk and spawning smaller tendrils as it went. The silver in this mighty vein twinkled at us; it danced upon the wall, first up then down and up again, till it disappeared at the far end of the cave descending into the bowels of the Earth.

  Christoph’s hand reached out and caressed the stone, his fingertips as light as one would stroke a lover. And he laughed, free and merry as I had never seen him before. The hardness in his heart gave way to the drunken joy of greed and newfound wealth. As for me, I looked upon the Fortune with amazement, my ears ringing with the words of Anya's foretelling. My lips moved to speak them again.

  ... something that does glimmer... that which is not yet treasure... a waterfall of silver...

  “We are as rich as lords, Englishman!” said Christoph, turning to me and grasping my shoulder. “And the Devil take Tilly and the Emperor!”

  “And the sisters?” said I. “What of them? This is their treasure, not ours.”

  “More than enough for all,” replied Christoph, smiling still. “Have we not earned our share of the spoils by our very work this day?”

  “Aye, perhaps. But there’ll be much more work before this is coin in hand. What do you know about being a miner?”

  “Yesterday a soldier, comrade. Today a miner. And tomorrow a gentleman shall I be.”

  We emerged into the dying light and the cool air of the forest. Rosemunde received me and it was fair strange to see this hard, bony woman take up my hands in hers and give her thanks with a smile upon her lips.