The Wine of Dreams

by Brian Craig - (ebook by Undead)

  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 reall
y 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.

  Chapter Seven

  Reinmar would rather have gone with his father to see Albrecht than mind the shop, but he knew that it was useless to protest. Godrich had better things to do than stand at the counter, and Reinmar knew that it would take far more than a mere witch hunt to make Gottfried Wieland consent to close his shop during business hours.

  As it turned out, though, Gottfried’s was a wasted trip. Albrecht was not at home, because Machar von Spurzheim had sent soldiers to arrest him and confine him in the town jail. They would have arrested his housekeeper too, but she had fled. The rumours that flew around the town were divided as to whether she had merely run away for her own safety or had gone to warn the secret vintners that trouble was on its way. As soon as Gottfried returned he threw himself into making urgent preparations for Reinmar’s imminent buying trip.

  As Reinmar had anticipated, Gottfried delegated Sigurd to serve alongside Godrich as his protector on the expedition. Sigurd normally worked on the quays loading and unloading barges, in which service he had built up an impressive set of muscles. Whenever the stevedores engaged in tug-o’-war competitions against the local land-labourers, Sigurd was the anchorman who tipped the balance, and in any local contest of individual strength he was the certain winner. He had never been trained in swordsmanship but he could wield a staff with terrific force and cunning, and his fists were as powerful as clubs. He was the kind of man in whose company any lesser mortal would feel safe, and Reinmar was glad to see him waiting with the wagon when he brought his own pack down from his room, not long after first light on the following day.

  He was not so pleased, however, to find Matthias Vaedecker waiting alongside Sigurd, with a pack of his own. He was not wearing his military colours, although he was carrying a crossbow.

  “What are you doing here?” Reinmar asked, in frank astonishment.

  “I’ve been ordered to travel with you,” the sergeant said, airily. “Herr von Spurzheim is anxious for your safety. There are rumours of monsters abroad in the hills.”

  Reinmar’s eyes flicked back and forth between the squat sergeant and the massive Sigurd. “There are always rumours of monsters in the hills,” he said. “Wise men know better than to take them seriously.”

  “The truly wise man is the one who knows when rumours that are not usually to be taken seriously begin to carry evil import,” the sergeant informed him, coolly.

  It seemed perfectly obvious to Reinmar that Vaedecker had actually been commissioned to spy on him, or at the very least to use the expedition as a cover enabling him to spy on the vintagers they intended to visit and any other travellers who might be abroad. He knew, too, that Vaedecker must be aware that it was obvious—but that was not a licence to say the words aloud. All Reinmar said, instead, was: “Where’s your horse?”

  “I’m an infantryman,” the sergeant replied, mildly. “The horses on which I and my companions arrived in Eilhart were hired, time being short while we still hoped to catch the man we were following before he disembarked. I shall be quite content to ride in the cart with you.”

  When Godrich joined them, Reinmar asked whether his father knew about the sergeant’s orders, but it was the sergeant who answered. “He is perfectly agreeable,” Vaedecker assured him—and Godrich confirmed it with a discreetly sullen nod.

  Gottfried came out of the shop a few minutes later to bid them all farewell, and he made a show of thanking Vaedecker for lending his services to the party. “These are troubled times,” he said, blithely overlooking the fact that the only symptom of trouble so far visible in Eilhart had been von Spurzheim’s arrival, “and I shall feel much better knowing that Reinmar has a seasoned soldier with him. The combination of Godrich’s wisdom, Sigurd’s strength and your fighting skill should ensure his safe return and the profitability of the expedition.”

  “I shall do my very best,” the soldier promised, “to ensure that the journey is as profitable as anyone could hope.”

  Not until the cart was loaded and Godrich had the whip in his fist did Gottfried hand over the purse containing the coins which Reinmar was to use in purchasing new stock. “Remember,” he said. “Be patient and clever in striking your bargains. Try not to seem so hard as to cause resentment, but always bear it in mind that we have an effective monopoly. Maintain an appearance of generosity—but make sure that it is only an appearance.”

  “I shall do my best,” Reinmar promised. “If anyone tries to take advantage of my youth and inexperience, I’ll tell them that I’m so terrified of my father that I dare not offer them a penny more than the meanest figure I can calculate, lest I be flogged within an inch of my life when I return with a wagon half full and an empty purse. They will easily believe it, will they not?”

  “They will,” Gottfried assured him—but his smile was not as broad as it should have been. “Good luck, my son, and come back safe.”

  Ordinarily, Reinmar would have chattered away to Godrich and Sigurd as the cart rolled out of town, but the presence of the sergeant was a powerful inhibiting factor. The only topic of conversation within the town that morning would be the arrest of Albrecht Wieland and its likely import, but that was not something that could be safely discussed in front of Vaedecker and Reinmar was not sufficiently desperate to cast about for a harmless substitute.

  The road on which they left town was a good one, but their progress was slowed somewhat by the fact that there was considerable traffic in the other direction. Although it was the day before the principal market day, the flow of everyday produce like eggs and milk was swelled by the movement of heavier produce in preparation for the weekly orgy of buying and selling. The further they drew away from the town, in fact, the more traffic of that kind they encountered and the narrower the road became. Theirs was the uphill route, which made their progress even more difficult.

  At first, they followed the course of the river, which flowed relatively smoothly for a league or so above Eilhart pool, even though it was not considered navigable by cargo-boats. There were plenty of rowboats on the water, and flat-bottomed ferries bringing carters and foot-travellers from the further bank, where the tracks were less comfortable. When they came to the first confluence of the Schilder with one of its lesser streams, they swung away south-westwards and the way became steeper. The peaks of the Grey Mountains were visible even in Eilhart, although the intervening hills supported the bleak horizon with a rich band of green, but the further they went into the forested slopes the more grey became visible from every ridge, and the true mass of the mountains became far easier to judge.

  By midday they had left the best farmlands behind, having progressed into drier land better suited to vines than to grain or root vegetables. In the depths of winter, Reinmar knew, the sun could scarcely raise itself above the distant peaks and all this land seemed bleak and derelict, but when the sun was high and shone benignly down upon them the valleys seemed much richer. The best vines grew on southern-facing slopes, and were always on the farther side of their particular hills, so the faces to which the cart first came usually looked wild and unpro
mising. They were grazed by flocks of ragged goats. When the cart had moved around to the better side, the vineyards nestling into the hillsides were revealed, each one dominated by a grey stone house surrounded by labourers’ cottages. A few such clusters were large enough to be reckoned villages, with their own inns, shrines and burial-grounds, but most were set some way apart from the dwellings that clung to the banks of streams and the coverts where fruit trees grew and foresters gathered.

  Reinmar made his first purchases as dusk approached, and they lodged that night with the wine-grower. Reinmar offered no explanation of Vaedecker’s presence and the grower assumed that he was present at Gottfried’s request to afford extra protection for his son. This enabled Vaedecker to ask some subtly searching questions about possible difficulties they might face as they went higher into the hills.

  “None that I can vouch for,” the grower assured them. “There is a lot of talk of monsters and black magic, but such talk is always produced in quantity when settled folk want an excuse to harass the gypsies. The summer has been an awkward one—some farmers have had a mediocre but satisfactory harvest while others have seen their crops utterly ruined by fierce storms. That has lowered the demand for casual labour, leaving more travellers to roam the land in search of whatever pickings they can find, and the situation has inflamed the jealousies that always fester among such folk. Why me? the unlucky always say in such circumstances. Why me and not him? Who has cursed me with this foul misfortune? Any violence bred by such talk tends to be suffered by the gypsies as well as blamed on them—I doubt that anyone will trouble you.”

  This sounded to Reinmar like good common sense, although Vaedecker did not seem entirely satisfied.

  What they saw in the course of the next three days seemed to Reinmar to confirm his judgement. The higher hills were often subject to violent but localised storms, which could batter fields and buildings with hailstones even in the hottest months, and such visitations could blast the fruits of one man’s yearly labour to smithereens while leaving his neighbour’s crop untouched. In good years the neighbours would rally round, alleviating the disaster with a portion of their own surplus, but in years when their yields had not lived up to their own hopes the neighbours were less generous and resentments accumulated. The pent-up anger usually erupted in ways that would not threaten permanent relationships, rebounding on strangers and scapegoats. Whenever he saw groups of gypsies Reinmar noted clear signs of tension between them and the settled folk.