by David Wood
As he came along the dirt path into the center of the village, he noticed the ruined church again, and wondered why the villagers had never repaired it. The white steeple laid crumpled on the ground in front of the small building, and one side of the structure looked like it had simply fallen in. The remains of the white clapboard building had listed to the unaffected side. From the amount of debris, and the rot on the side of the wood cladding, Wagner guessed the building had been out of commission for years.
As he walked deeper into the little village, he spotted a few menfolk and women, darting indoors at the sight of him. It was no more than he had expected. Still, he spied a small general store on his way into the village, and he suspected that was where Petran had been obtaining items for him. He determined to at least see what was on offer for sale in this remote locale.
The shop, at one end of town, was a small white building with a thatched roof, not entirely different from the inn or most of the other buildings. The sign, which had been hung above the door with perfect precision, was wood and proclaimed in German: All Things. Wagner noticed that this building was cleaner than the others, and he noted the cut grass and carefully tended flower bed in front of it. Whoever owned the store clearly took pride in maintaining its appearance.
He stepped through the door, and heard a small bell jingle on the inside of it. The inside of the shop was dim, but through no fault of the building’s design—it was filled from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall with all manner of things in a seemingly haphazard fashion, and the huge stacks obscured the light from the windows. Books, sacks of flour and wheat, tools, clothes, fresh vegetables, cans of paint. It was all stacked in random and unpredictable ways, and the shop was larger on the inside than Wagner might have suspected from the outside. Narrow twisting paths led between the aisles of miscellaneous items, and the floor gave way to stairs down to a larger basement, which he imagined held even more.
No way can the interior of this shop be run by the same person that tends the outside, he thought.
The proprietor greeted him from behind the counter, and Wagner understood immediately. It was the Bavarian man with the pipe from the tavern. That explained the well-tended exterior of the building, but not the chaotic interior.
“Guten tag!” Wagner greeted the man in German.
“Ah! Herr Wagner, is it not? When we hadn’t seen you in such a long time, we thought perhaps you had given up on your project at the castle.” The man held his distinctive pipe in hand, but it was unlit. He had a thick beard that was going white, while his hair was still mostly dark with just streaks of light at the temples. His eyes were kind, with deep crinkles from a life of laughing. The brown suit he wore was slightly rumpled, with a colorful waistcoast under it. Wagner was reminded of university professors he had seen in Munich. “I am Henning Brandt,” the man said. “Welcome to my shop.”
Wagner took the offered hand. “You have quite an array of items for sale.”
Brandt laughed. “Oh yes, I try to have a little of everything. We are far from the other towns and villages, so I try to bring in the odd thing from time to time. I actually have a system to how it’s all arranged, I assure you. Just tell me what you need; I can find it for you.”
“Just looking for shovels, hammers, any masonry tools you might have. Plus books, of course.”
The older man’s eyebrows raised. “You are a reader then, my friend? Come, I have much to show you.”
Without waiting for a reply, Brandt turned and descended stairs at the back of the store to the broad basement, which to Wagner’s estimation ran to a far wider footprint than that of the building. After some more shelving with various bric-a-brac, they entered a section of the shop that held only books. Aisles and aisles of shelves filled with bound volumes of every size. Wagner stopped in complete disbelief.
The Bavarian turned and looked at Wagner with sympathy. “I know. I bought many in my youth, and even though I know I’ll never live long enough to read all of them, I keep buying more when I make trips to purchase supplies.” He sighed, but there was good nature in it.
“So this is your personal collection, then?” Wagner asked.
“Yes, but I sell a few from time to time. Have a look around and let me know if you are looking for anything. The books are arranged in a logical fashion—even if everything upstairs is not.” Herr Brandt laughed again and headed for the stairs as the bell on the front door jingled again.
Wagner began to examine the stacks and quickly decided it was a good thing the Count’s library was so extensive, or he would be spending all of his pay here. Then he realized that the Count probably secured many of his recent volumes directly from Brandt. He decided to examine the books first and then ply the German for information about the village and the Count.
He was just pulling a book off the shelf to lose himself in another world—he had found a bound volume of old issues of Strand Magazine, and although the first issue in it contained the last Arthur Conan Doyle story The Final Problem, which he’d read, there were others in it he hadn’t—when he recognized the clipped voice of the man addressing Brandt upstairs.
Petran.
Chapter 12
Brandt didn’t sound as if he liked Petran very much.
Where the old Bavarian had been kindly and gregarious with Wagner, he was brusque and all business with the tall, gangly servant. “No, I don’t have any in stock. Anything else?”
“Yes, actually,” Petran’s carefully enunciated Oxford English sounded strange in the shop after Wagner had just been casually chatting with Brandt in German. “I would like to know if you have seen Herr Wagner today.”
Wagner took an involuntary step back into the stacks of books in the basement at the mention of his name up in the shop.
“I have not.” Brandt’s answer surprised Wagner. “Are you expecting him? Should I give him a message if he comes in?”
A long silence followed. Then Petran spoke again, his tone somewhat petulant, “No message. Just these things, and any new books you have from the list.”
The shrill ring of the hand-crank activating the cash register, and then Brandt gruffly replied, “No. Nothing new.” A moment later a soft grunt and the door opened, chiming the shop’s tiny bell. Wagner smiled to himself when the shopkeeper did not wish Petran a good day.
He stepped further back into the books and resumed his examination of the shelves, finding a few choice volumes that he pulled down to purchase. Twenty minutes later, the portly German came down the creaking steps to join him.
“You overheard?” The man spoke in their common Bavarian dialect.
“I did, Herr Brandt. It was Petran, was it not?” Wagner relished speaking to the man in their shared regional dialect. It meant that the man was opening up to him because of their familiar geographical history, but it also meant that their discussion would be almost unintelligible to any local Hungarians or Romanians that might overhear them. Although the standard German language was widely understood in this area, the Bavarian dialect would be challenging for anyone not a native speaker from that region.
“He is a slug. Always creeping, that one. He’s one of my best customers, or I would turn him away entirely. He always asks for strange things I couldn’t possibly have. Today it was live crickets.” The man shrugged.
“Crickets?”
“Yes. He wanted a twenty-pound sack of them. Where am I supposed to get live crickets from? He sometimes buys loads of things at a go. Other times he is only looking for these kinds of odd things. But he pays in gold, so I tolerate him.”
Wagner absorbed the comment about Petran paying in gold. The Count was clearly doing well in his consulting business, so the gold made sense. Only the wealthy would be likely to call on him to consult on obscure diseases.
Brandt stepped closer, and his expression went from amusedly exasperated to deadly serious, “He was asking after you.”
“The Count’s coach is supposed to collect me this afternoon,” Wagner
told him. “I suppose he was hoping to save a journey in from the castle, but I’ve only just got here, and now that I see your selection of books…” Wagner held up the armload he had already collected for purchase.
Brandt smiled a small bibliophile’s smile and took out his pipe. He began to load the bowl with a fragrant tobacco.
“Have you met him yet?” he asked. The smile evaporated.
“The Count? Yes. A few times. Much younger than I would have suspected.” Wagner watched as the shopkeeper lit the pipe and took a few tentative puffs of smoke. Normally, Wagner would have wanted to avoid pipe smoke in such a confined space, but he actually found the tobacco quite pleasant.
“Younger?” Brandt raised an eyebrow. “When we last saw him here in the village, he was an old man.”
“Perhaps, this man is the former’s son, then?” Wagner offered.
“Perhaps. Let’s hope so. The father was a nasty man.”
Wagner waited, hoping there would be some elaboration, but the older Bavarian turned and headed for the stairs. After another thirty minutes perusing the shelves—and finding several more volumes to purchase, some new and others with cracked leather bindings—Wagner returned to the shop’s upper level. He looked through the miscellaneous items on the shelves for a few minutes. He quickly gave up on deciphering any semblance of logic in the organization. He asked Brandt for assistance, and then explained to the man the kind of restoration work he was doing on the old castle. Although the man had no stone-working experience, he quickly grasped the scope of the work and began suggesting tools and items that were mostly of use. Wagner would be leaving with far more items than he had intended to. The discussion quickly ranged back to Bavaria, and things both men had seen and done in Munich. When Wagner revealed his penchant for climbing in the Alps, he discovered Brandt had been a climber as well.
“It’s why I came to this country in the first place. In retrospect, I should have gone to Switzerland.” Brandt went on to tell the tale of how he had come to Transylvania, and regaled Wagner with his climbing exploits. Before either man knew it, they had been talking for hours, and along the way they had become friends.
Wagner checked his battered watch and announced that he needed to go because the Count’s coach would be coming for him. He noted that Brandt frowned at the mention of the coach. He wondered if it was because they had enjoyed such a great discussion, which had now come to an end, or if it was because he had mentioned the owner of the coach. Whatever it was that had happened between the Count’s father—it had to have been his father, Wagner thought, the man is barely thirty—and the people of the village, Wagner determined to learn of it, but he knew it would take time. Brandt seemed to be his best bet. Certainly the other villagers he had met were too hostile to ever open up.
He arranged with Brandt to have his items collected by Petran, who, it turned out, visited the village every other day to collect food and supplies. Brandt had also mentioned that Petran was his largest purchaser of books, often leaving long lists of titles for the Bavarian to collect on his travels. Brandt didn’t like Petran, and he rarely spoke of the Count, but he did admire their taste in books. He admitted that he hadn’t been sure of the Count’s return and sometimes wondered if Petran was the heavy reader. Brandt said the money he had earned just from selling books to the Count could have allowed him to start another shop. Instead he used the money to travel to the great cities of Europe once a year, seeking out rare new volumes for himself and for Petran’s list.
“Have a very wonderful day, Herr Brandt. I look forward to our next discussion. I shall try to come in to the village far more often now.” Wagner smiled warmly, and the older Bavarian smiled back at him as he stepped out of the store and into the village sunlight.
The sun was low in the sky, but it was still a bright day. Wagner wrestled with the stack of books he had purchased that he felt he couldn’t do without until Petran’s next journey into the village. He began walking toward the inn, suddenly famished. The food had been good that first night; he could tolerate the surly proprietor’s disgruntled attitude if it meant another fine meal.
He had taken only a few steps when he spied Petran a few buildings down, stepping out of a door that had a sign swinging over it in the shape of a loaf of bread. Petran’s dark suit and gangly frame stood in contrast to the white-washed buildings and the glare of the sun. His hair was greasy, and it shone in the glinting beams of sunshine slicing through the clouds above. He looked altogether awkward and uncomfortable out in the daylight, nothing like the confrontational man Wagner had met in the wine cellar at the castle. Petran hadn’t noticed him, and turned to walk toward the narrow black coach parked further up the lane. Wagner considered following Petran to explain his desire to eat before returning to the castle, but changed his mind. No, he can just wait for me.
He was about to turn back for the door to Miklos’s tavern when a strong hand gripped his shoulder from behind and an arm wrapped around his throat.
Chapter 13
Andreas Wagner twisted, his attacker’s grip loosening, and he swung his pile of books, bringing them up to smash his attacker’s face. The man released him and stepped back, the blow with the stack of books missing him. Wagner tightened his grip on the layers of books in his arms. His surprise and anger at the assault quickly turned to elation when he took in the sight of his attacker.
“Fritz!” he shouted. “Damn, man, you scared the life out of me.”
Fridtjof Bischoff was a large man with good Germanic looks. Blonde hair cut short like a soldier’s and blue eyes as clear as blue-tinged glass. He stood almost a head taller than Wagner, and was easily twice as broad. Where Wagner was lank and corded muscle, Fritz was beefy bulk, liberally covered with a thin layer of fat from extensive and happy beer drinking. As usual, he wore a waistcoat with no jacket. Wagner could not recall Fritz ever wearing a jacket.
“What are you doing here?” Wagner smiled at his old friend as he adjusted his stack of books to one arm, and vigorously shook Fritz’s offered hand.
“We decided to come over a bit early and surprise you. The job is still on, right?” Fritz unloaded some of Wagner’s stack of books, and tucked them in his armpit.
“Of course it is. Wait… ‘we’?” Wagner quickly turned around to see his wife emerging from the door of Miklos’s inn.
Anneli Wagner was a vision of beauty. Her brilliant yellow dress made her stand out against the white of the village buildings and the green of the fields down the road beyond them. Her long blonde hair was pulled back in a neat bow, and her eyes glittered like cut gemstones. Her smile washed over her face as she saw Wagner, and she began to rush across the road to him.
They embraced, and he held his mute wife with a sudden and desperate longing. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed her, but now that she was in his arms, he felt the emotion spread over him. From the tightness of her embrace, he could tell the experience was the same for her. When she at last pulled away from his hug, and Wagner became aware of Fritz’s good-natured laughter behind him, he could see Anneli’s eyes were wet with tears, and her silent mouth was turned up in a joyous smile.
“I’ve missed you deeply, my love,” he told her softly.
She nodded.
“I wish Fritz would talk like that to me some day!” the new voice was high and a little grating, but Wagner was glad to hear it. He stepped back from Anneli’s embrace to see Gretchen standing next to Fritz. She had a long rope of dark hair that stretched down to her waist, and soft brown eyes. She wore a dress similar to Anneli’s, but hers was a faint blue, and Wagner wasn’t sure the color fit her. She would frequently wear daring dresses with very low-cut fronts, but this one was less revealing. Wagner thought her pretty, but in a plain sort of way. She was very slim and had narrow hips and a slightly pointed nose. She was a lively and fun girl, who had made Fritz happy for the last year, and who had been a constant companion for Anneli after the loss of Britta. Wagner would have been forever grateful to
the woman for that alone, but through her association with Fritz, she had become his friend as well.
“And there you are, you gorgeous thing! Is this lunkish brute treating you right?” Wagner instantly fell into the harmless flirting he and Gretchen had always engaged in.
“She’s keeping me constantly busy with her shopping sprees across the fine stores of Europe, if you must know,” Fritz complained. Wagner knew that the woman liked to shop. She sheepishly copped to it, with a smile, and Wagner laughed.
“I wasn’t expecting the three of you for another few weeks. Why the change?”
“We got bored after Gretchen had us all packed and ready to go two weeks ago,” Fritz joked.
Gretchen playfully slapped at the big man’s arm.
“Well,” Wagner thought for a moment, “I haven’t arranged transportation for everyone, and the road is quite narrow.” He spied the coach from Dorna-Watra parked at the north end of town, and the Count’s narrow coach waiting for him at the south end of town. There was no sign of Petran now. “There’s no way your coach can make the journey.”
Fritz stepped up closer as he looked at the narrow coach Wagner pointed to. “Well, then, we’ll just have to send the ladies on in that narrow little thing, and you and I will ride the horses from the bigger coach.”