[Warhammer] - The Wine of Dreams

by Brian Craig - (ebook by Undead)

  “He will not,” said a new voice, speaking from the door that connected the shop to the living-quarters of the house.

  Reinmar and the stranger turned their heads simultaneously. Reinmar was surprised to see his father, having expected him to be out on business for at least two hours more.

  “Cousin Gottfried,” said the stranger, easily. “I’m glad to meet you, at long last.”

  “I have no cousin,” Gottfried replied coldly. “What is it you want?”

  “He asked for dark wine,” Reinmar put in, anxious to avoid any accusation that might materialise regarding his apparent failure to do his job properly. “I told him that I did not know what he meant.”

  “Which was true,” Gottfried said, still speaking in a cold tone that he usually reserved for his servants when they had earned his most extreme displeasure—and occasionally for his son, when Reinmar had done something he reckoned very wrong. “We have no such thing in our cellars.”

  “Come now, cousin,” the stranger said, meekly. “I assure you that you can trust me—and if you doubt me, there are things I could say to Uncle Luther that would set his mind at rest. Will you insist that I return in company with my father, when I had hoped to arrive at his house bearing an appropriate gift? I bring news—bad news, alas, but news that you ought to hear.”

  “We do not keep the wine you want,” Gottfried said, firmly. “We have not kept it for twenty years and more. No one in Eilhart keeps it now. There is none to be had for ten leagues in any direction.”

  “You will forgive me if I take leave to doubt that,” the stranger said, smiling. “Perhaps I should take my news to someone who will be grateful for the warning.”

  Reinmar pricked up his ears at the mention of the word “warning” but Gottfried was not to be tempted or intimidated. “I will not give you leave,” he said, with all his typical sternness. “No one in Eilhart doubts my word, and I expect a similar courtesy from strangers. I would be greatly obliged, sir, if you would leave my shop and never return. There is nothing for you here. Nothing. We are respectable tradesmen.”

  The stranger murmured something that even Reinmar could not quite catch, although it might have included the phrase “a contradiction in terms”—but the dark man was quick enough to draw back, and then to turn towards the door that led out to the street. “Very well, Cousin Gottfried,” he said, as he opened the door and made ready to step out. “I shall have to go to my father empty-handed—but if you never see me again, it will be the result of his instruction, not my desire. Will you tell me how to get to his house?”

  “If it will be rid of you, I’ll be glad to,” Gottfried said, ungraciously. “Go up the hill until you pass the bounds of the town, then take the pathway that goes away to the right. Go through the gap between the two farms and on for a further five hundred paces. You’ll see the slate roof of Albrecht’s house on the upper slope, nested in the firs. If you miss the path you’ll find your way easily enough—the ground’s not treacherous.”

  “Thank you, cousin,” the dark man said. “I’m sorry that you did not want to hear my news. Good day to you, Reinmar.”

  Reinmar might have replied had he not caught his father’s eye, but the rejoinder died on his lips. The stranger stepped out into the street and closed the door quietly behind him. Reinmar found, somewhat to his own amazement, that his bad mood had evaporated, to be replaced by a fervent curiosity. It was the most exciting sensation that had possessed him for as long as he could remember.

  The silence that fell when the stranger’s footsteps had died away was profound. Reinmar resisted the temptation to demand an immediate explanation from his father, contenting himself with watching the elder Wieland carefully as he moved uneasily around the shop, making a show of peering into the racks as if taking stock. For several minutes Reinmar was prepared to assume that his father would eventually relent, but the older man’s body became gradually less tense and still he kept silent.

  Reinmar’s mother had died when he was a small child, and Reinmar had always wanted to believe that Gottfried’s lack of emotion was a defensive mask forced upon him by the loss of a beloved wife, but now he wondered whether the chill might have set in long before that. In the end, Reinmar could contain himself no longer. “Did Great-Uncle Albrecht have a son while he lived in Marienburg?” he asked. “Could that man be your cousin?”

  “No one in Eilhart knows or cares what Albrecht got up to in Marienburg,” Gottfried replied, brusquely. “We are respectable folk.”

  Reinmar had only the vaguest notion of when Albrecht had gone to Marienburg or when he had returned, both events having taken place before he was born. No one had ever told him in so many words why Albrecht and Luther had quarrelled, but he suspected that it must have had to do with the business. Presumably Albrecht had felt that there was more to life than shopkeeping and had gone off to “seek his fortune”, leaving Luther to learn the ins and outs of the trade much as Reinmar was now doing. If that had indeed been the way it was, Reinmar could easily sympathise with Albrecht, but he had no brother of his own, and his father would be only too glad to remind him that Albrecht had not, in the end, found or made “his fortune”. At some later date the prodigal had returned to Eilhart to live, by which time he no longer had any financial stake in the business and no friends in the town, where he had settled again as a virtual stranger. Nowadays, he was a recluse; even if Reinmar had been able to recognise him, the probability of “running into him” in the market square was negligible.

  “What is this dark wine that he wanted to buy?” Reinmar wanted to know. “Do we have any in the cellar?”

  “No we do not,” Gottfried replied, his coldness turning to passionate heat with alarming suddenness. “It were best you had never heard of it, but since you have, you must believe me when I tell you that there has been none in this house for twenty years. We do not keep it and never shall.”

  “Why? Because it is Bretonnian?”

  “Bretonnian! It is worse than that, Reinmar. We do not keep such liquor.”

  “But you did once,” Reinmar pointed out, inferring the obvious. “Or grandfather did, in the days when you were his apprentice.”

  “What my father did when I was your age does not concern you,” Gottfried said firmly. “There has never been anything within these walls to taint your life or harm your soul, and so it will remain while there is breath in my body. I cannot deny that your great-uncle exists, since he lives little more than an hour’s walk away, but his connection with this house was severed many years ago and can never be repaired. He has no legitimate kin, so we have no cousins in law—and this is a house in which the law obtains its due respect.”

  “Are you saying that Great-Uncle Albrecht’s house is one in which the law is not respected?” Reinmar asked curiously.

  “I am saying that the dead past need not concern you,” Gottfried repeated. “We do not keep the produce for which that man was enquiring. If he calls again while I am not here, send him away immediately. He is not to be allowed to linger here, and he is not to be allowed to see my father. Do you understand?”

  “Not really,” Reinmar said.

  “Then you must obey without understanding,” was the absolutely typical reply. “I have said what there is to say” To make that abundantly clear, Gottfried stamped back to the door which gave access to the stairway leading up to the bedrooms, and slammed it behind him.

  Reinmar absentmindedly raised his hand to tug at his collar. His throat was dry and the warm air was so heavy that it seemed to require twice the usual effort to draw an adequate measure into his lungs. He was not in the least surprised by his father’s unwillingness to tell him more, because there were a great many issues on which Gottfried Wieland was apt to offer opinions as if they were beyond all possible dispute. Yet most of the others were matters of propriety and etiquette. This was the first time Reinmar had been squarely confronted with the awareness that his family had secrets, although now he was forced to conside
r the fact, he realised that there were other clues he might have noticed, had he been more observant.

  While Albrecht had hardly ever been mentioned, the fact that he was hardy ever mentioned had not seemed particularly significant. But now the matter had been so sharply raised the omission took on a new significance in Reinmar’s thoughts. There was also the matter of his grandfather’s illness. There was nothing unusual in the fact that the old man was an invalid who never left his room—there were at least four other houses in the neighbourhood whose attics played permanent host to an aged grandparent whose name had become legend—but Reinmar had observed since taking up his new duties that whenever older clients of the shop felt obliged to ask after Luther’s condition there was always a slight discomfort or embarrassment in the pronunciation of his name. Although the customers always took care to say that they were pleased when he reported that his grandfather was no worse, they did not always contrive to match their facial expressions to their words. The impression Reinmar had gained was not so much that his grandfather was disliked as that the old man was feared.

  As to the mystery of the “dark wine”, Reinmar had not the slightest idea what might lie behind it. What could his father possibly have meant by “worse than Bretonnian’? Why had the stranger been so insistent that he was willing to pay the full market price for the product? What was the news that Gottfried had refused to hear, and why was there a warning in it?

  Reinmar was still mulling over these mysteries when the shop door opened again and a second stranger came in. This man was much taller and paler than the first. He was dressed in clothes which were of better quality, though they were even duller in hue, being almost entirely black. His eyes were blue; his slightly hooked nose made them seem hawkish. Reinmar had never seen an eagle at close range, but this man seemed to have something of the eagle about him.

  The second stranger barely glanced about him before coming to the counter. He reached into his pouch and brought forth a folded piece of parchment. He opened the bottom flap to reveal a patch of dark red wax into which a seal had been impressed.

  “Do you recognise this?” he said.

  “No,” said Reinmar.

  “It is the seal of Grand Theogonist Volkmar,” the stranger informed him loftily.

  Reinmar had heard the name of Volkmar before, although he had only the faintest idea of what a Grand Theogonist might be. Volkmar, so rumour had it, was a famous warrior who rode into battle on the War Altar of Sigmar. He was reputed to be the second most important person in the Empire, after Emperor Karl Franz himself—which presumably meant that any document on which his seal was set conferred considerable authority upon its holder. What the hook-nosed stranger was trying to impress upon Reinmar, therefore, was that he was a man of vast importance—certainly greater than the burgomaster of Eilhart and probably greater than the baron in whose fief the town lay. Reinmar had never seen the baron, who seemed to spend all his time in Altdorf.

  “Is it?” was all the reply he could contrive.

  He did not mean to seem sceptical, but the black-clad stranger took umbrage anyhow. “Sigmar protect me from the ignorance of peasants!” he exclaimed, with a world-weary gesture. “What is your name?”

  Reinmar sensed that it would be unwise to point out that he was not a peasant. The stranger obviously knew already exactly what manner of man he was.

  “I’m Reinmar Wieland,” Reinmar said, as politely as he could. “Would you like me to fetch my father, sir? I believe he’s at home.”

  “Have you been at this counter all day?” the stranger demanded.

  “Yes sir,” Reinmar admitted.

  “Then it’s you I want answers from, Reinmar Wieland. Since it seems to mean nothing to you, I ought to explain that this warrant entitles me to demand honest answers, and that any failure to give them is punishable by the severest penalties. I am the Grand Theogonist’s special agent. My name is Machar von Spurzheim. Think carefully before you answer me. Has this shop been visited today by a man not known in these parts, perhaps half a hand’s-breadth taller than you and rather portly, with near-black hair and a dark complexion?”

  Reinmar took full advantage of the invitation to think carefully before he replied, but in the end he said, “Yes.”

  “When?” Von Spurzheim shot out the question like an archer loosing an arrow.

  “Perhaps half an hour ago,” Reinmar told him.

  “What did he want?”

  Reinmar had anticipated the question, and had made up his mind that he would not hesitate. “He asked for something called dark wine,” he said. “I had never heard of it. My father came in while I was explaining that, and told the man that we did not stock such a thing.” He knew that he was being slightly economical with the truth, but instinct told him that it was the safest course when dealing with a Grand Theogonist’s special agent.

  “Is it true that you do not stock dark wine?” the black-clad man demanded.

  “It is,” Reinmar confirmed. “I asked my father what dark wine was, and he would not tell me, but he said that it was something in which we do not deal and never shall. He was very adamant about it.”

  “Was he indeed? And did he tell the customer where else he might obtain what he sought?”

  “No sir. He told him that there was no other possible source. There is no other wine merchant hereabouts—the nearest shop is in Holthusen, and that is ours too. Some of the vintagers who supply us will sell wine directly to their neighbours and occasional visitors, but I never heard of one who made dark wine and I have lived my whole life in and above this shop.”

  “Fifteen years!” von Spurzheim scoffed.

  “Sixteen, sir,” Reinmar corrected him, “and nine months.”

  “Do you know where the man went when he left the shop?”

  “I heard his footsteps going along the street,” Reinmar said, with the utmost care. “He had turned left outside the door and he was going uphill, in the opposite direction to the market square.” It was absolutely true, so far as it went.

  “Good,” said the agent of the Grand Theogonist. “I have taken lodgings at the burgomaster’s house. If you see this man again send word to me, or to the sergeant in command of the men-at-arms at the inn on the market square—or, failing that, to the local constables.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and left.

  Chapter Three

  Reinmar wasted no time in running upstairs to find his father, but Gottfried insisted on coming down with him before hearing what he had to say. Gottfried Wieland was a great respecter of rules, and the cardinal rule of shopkeeping was never to leave the shop unattended. Once the two of them were back amid the display stock, however, the older man listened very attentively to Reinmar’s account of the second visitor—and Reinmar watched his father’s face grow deathly pale.

  “Who is he?” Reinmar asked, as soon as he had told all he knew.

  “A witch hunter,” Gottfried replied, in a low tone. “An important witch hunter, if he carries the Grand Theogonist’s seal, although I doubt that he got it from Volkmar himself. It’s bad enough that there is any interest at all in Altdorf in this affair, although I suppose there will always be interest in Altdorf whenever evil in Marienburg is mentioned. No one now alive remembers the secession, but Wilhelm’s heir is ever watchful. Did this witch hunter say how many men-at-arms he has with him? No, of course not—but if he can lodge them at an inn there can hardly be many. More might be coming, though, now that he knows that he is on the right track. Did you mention Luther or Albrecht?”

  “No,” said Reinmar. “It did not seem politic to reveal that the stranger called me cousin. Did I do right?”

  “You did right,” Gottfried confirmed, although there was no hint of fatherly pride in the confirmation, “but if he corners his quarry the relationship will come out anyway, and it would only require one ill-spoken word…”

  He broke off abruptly as the door to the shop opened yet again. This time it was Marguerite who ca
me in. She had found a reason to cut short the period of quarantine to which her wounded feelings had condemned poor Reinmar. “Reinmar!” she said, breathlessly. “There are soldiers in the square—they rode in on big black horses. They came with a witch hunter, it’s said, hunting an evil magician who stowed away on a barge from Holthusen! That was the witch hunter himself who left your shop a few minutes ago!”

  Reinmar did not know quite what to say to that, but probably would not have been allowed to get two words out in any case before his father intervened. “I’ll thank you not to bring gossip into this shop, young lady,” Gottfried said. “And I’ll thank you not to talk about our customers, whose business is their own.”

  Marguerite looked crestfallen, but her excitement was irrepressible.

  “Did he speak to you, Reinmar?” she asked, breathlessly.

  “Yes,” Reinmar said—but he had no time to add anything else.

  “That’s none of your business,” Gottfried said. “And the witch hunter’s business is none of ours, thankfully.”

  It seemed, though, that he was wrong. Marguerite was still holding on to the door, having been unsure of her welcome since the moment she had first seen Gottfried standing next to Reinmar. Now she was pushed gently but firmly to one side as two armed men entered the shop. Reinmar did not recognise the colours they were wearing; all he knew for sure was that they were not the Baron’s.

  “Gottfried Wieland?” one of them enquired, politely enough.

  “That’s me,” Gottfried said.