The Wine of Dreams (41 page)

“Reinmar, please.” The plea came from Marguerite, still terrified.

“Your little friend will not lightly forgive you for this unnecessary delay,”
Wirnt said, smiling grimly. “And when the cost of this night’s work is counted,
you’ll need every friend you can find. You brought those monsters here, Reinmar—you. I am probably the only man for a hundred miles who does not bear you a
grudge for that, because I know what your work has done to the price of dark
wine, and I mean to have your secret supply for my own. I am young enough that I
only need the merest sip for myself, and I know exactly what price to extract
for the rest from those whose need and thirst is greater by far. Only let me
have what I want, and the girl will be safe. I’ll be gone in no time at all.”

“You’ll have to find Luther,” Reinmar said, more desperately than before—but
as he spoke he saw that Wirnt’s eyes were no longer fixed on his. The stout man
was looking past him, at someone on the stair, and there was a new uncertainty
in his gaze.

Reinmar turned, hoping to see Luther, or Gottfried, or even Albrecht
refreshed—but what he actually saw was Marcilla, perhaps awake but definitely
dreaming.

The gypsy girl had her head slightly raised, as if she were listening
intently or trying to catch a faint and fugitive odour. She was moving slowly
but her body was quite poised, her eyes open but unseeing. When she reached the
foot of the stair she moved towards the head of another—the stone flight that
led down into the cellars.

“It seems that I do not need you after all, Master Wieland,” Wirnt observed,
triumphantly. “Your hiding place may be proof even against an educated palate like my own, but she belongs entirely to the
wine, and has since the moment of her conception. You cannot hide it from her!”

Reinmar was not sure that this judgement could be accurate, given that
Wirnt’s mother appeared to be a sorceress, while Marcilla’s had merely been a
gypsy, but he had already been warned that the gypsy might find the nectar
wherever it was hidden. He had brought her out of the valley, but it seemed that
nothing he could do could free her from the call that she had heard.

He understood for the first time how hopeless his love had been, how small
and impotent a thing any mere affection was against the kind of command that was
incarnate in the perfume of the thing that Sigurd had slain, and which had slain
Sigurd in its turn.

He understood, too, that perhaps Luther had not been fool enough to take the
nectar with him when he left the house. Perhaps he had hidden it again, in some
secret place of his own.

“Follow her!” Wirnt said, abruptly. “I’ll come along too—and remember that
this pretty maid’s safety is in your hands. If I get what I need, she’ll be
safe. If not—whatever might happen to you or me—she’ll be dead.”

Reinmar did as he was told. He picked up the candle-tray from the bottom step
of the wooden stair, and held it high enough to light Marcilla’s way down the
stone flight, although it did not seem that she was in any need of the guidance
of mere light.

This is fortunate, Reinmar told himself, as he moved behind the ensorcelled
girl. I would never have been able to convince Wirnt that my grandfather had the
nectar, or that I could not find his hiding-place, but now I shall see where it
is before he does. He has the dagger, but I have the candle.

He tried, desperately, to think of some way in which he could turn that
discrepancy into a winning advantage without exposing Marguerite to any further
risk of having her throat cut. He was still horribly conscious of his own
enfeeblement.

Marcilla reached the bottom of the flight, and swiftly went on into the mazy
corridors between the racks of wine.

There was little enough room here for people to pass in single file, and
Wirnt had Marguerite to cope with as well as his own over-ample girth. Unfortunately, Wirnt knew only too well that there was
a hazard in allowing Reinmar to move too far ahead of him and he quickly called
an instruction to halt.

“Now, my dear,” Wirnt said to Marguerite, when Reinmar obeyed. “I want you to
move up behind your friend, and reach around him very carefully. I want you to
remove his sword from its scabbard, very carefully, and drop it on the floor.”

It took longer than Wirnt must have hoped for Marguerite to do this, but she
did it, and the sword clanged upon the stone floor.

“Good,” Wirnt said. “Now, put your hands around him and clasp him tightly.
From now on, the two of you must move as one—but I have the dagger at your
back and I’ll slip it through your ribs if I have the slightest cause. Now move
on.”

Reinmar moved on. Marguerite’s hands were clasped tight in front of his
chest, and the pressure of her arms seemed a far greater restraint than it
actually was—but he heard Wirnt pick up his sword as they pressed on, and knew
that he was now at a very severe disadvantage indeed, even though he still had
control of the light.

Marcilla had moved on swiftly ahead, but she came to a stop now, and moved
her arms uncertainly, as if her fingertips were able to sense the direction of
the missing phial. She moved off into a blind side-corridor, heading for a
section of bare wall.

There was no more visual evidence of any loose mortar in this wall than there
had been in Reinmar’s bedroom, but Reinmar knew that Luther had lived in the
house for a very long time, and that von Spurzheim could not have been the first
warranted official to think that its cellars ought to be searched.

Wirnt, who had obviously reached the same conclusion, let out an audible sigh
of anticipation.

Then there was an almighty crash, as something exploded upon the stout man’s
head.

Marguerite screamed as the sword or the dagger pricked her back, and clutched
Reinmar so tightly that he dropped the candle-tray. The candle flickered, but
its light did not fail, and the flame stabilised again when the tray came to
rest right way up.

Reinmar turned, putting his own arms protectively around Marguerite’s body
and hoping fervently that she was not too badly hurt.

She was not. Wirnt had been felled far too abruptly to be able to carry out
his threat. He had been struck from above, not from behind; he had had no chance
to see or hear his assailant’s approach.

That assailant was stretched out atop a rank of shelves, from which he had
plucked the jar of wine that he had shattered on Wirnt’s solid skull. Ulick, it
appeared, had never left the house at all. He had merely hidden himself, in a
place that was too narrow to accommodate anyone but a person of his slender
configuration.

The gypsy boy’s eyes were wide open, and must have been sufficiently capable
of sight to guide his blow, but as soon as Reinmar looked into them he knew that
Ulick’s condition was exactly similar to Marcilla’s. Reinmar deduced that he had
been set here to stand guard over the phial that Luther Wieland had hidden in
the wall, and keep it safe for his sister, perhaps also for himself.

Even so, Reinmar felt that he had to make an effort to talk sensibly to the
boy.

“Ulick,” he said, quietly. “You must not let Marcilla drink the nectar. If
both of you will only consent to let it alone, there is still a chance that you
might survive this dread affair. I understand now that I should never have
brought it out of the valley, but I was confused by its perfume. It is evil
through and through, and ought to be destroyed.”

While Reinmar was speaking, though, Ulick scrambled down the racks and picked
up Wirnt’s dagger.

Reinmar might have been able to make a grab for his sword had Marguerite not
been in his way, but he could not bear to thrust her rudely backwards over
Wirnt’s fallen body, using her as a shield. It would have been too cruel even if
it had not been too dangerous. It was Marcilla that he loved, still, but
Marguerite was his friend, and she had already been frightened and cut for his
sake.

“Is the nectar yours, Master Wieland?” Ulick asked, in a voice not quite his
own. “Do you claim it for yourself?”

“No,” Reinmar said. “I do not. It is not the sort of thing that any mere man
can or ought to possess—he who has it is himself possessed.”

He felt a hand upon his shoulder then, placed from behind, and felt
Marcilla’s fingers caressing the side of his neck. He felt her breath upon his cheek as she leaned forward to whisper in his ear—but
the voice that spoke to him was not quite her own, and he knew that no matter
how he had striven to deny the fact, she was already possessed.

Marcilla’s voice, like Ulick’s, was now the voice that had spoken to him out
of nowhere while he was wide awake, and had spoken to him far more subtly in his
wine-induced dream.

“Dearest Reinmar,” the voice said, “we are all possessed, from the moment we
first learn to see till the moment we must learn to die. We are possessed by our
appetites and our lusts, and no matter how hard reason may fight for its empire,
those claims of ownership can never be set aside. You are possessed, my darling,
and the chit you hold in your hands is possessed too, securely and forever. You
do not have the choice to be anything but a possession, and never will; the only
freedom you will ever have is the freedom to be used in a better way than some
few of your fellows. You might be mine, if you wished it, but if you will not be
mine you will only be another’s, or held in common by all my awesome kind, to be
buffeted one way and then another, never knowing true rest or fair certainty or
real pleasure. Far better to be mine, dear heart, knowingly and willingly. That
way, at least, there is some slight reward in life, instead of endless worry and
endless travail. Believe me, darling Reinmar, there is nothing you will desire
more when you grow old than the opportunity to put the clock back and give
yourself entirely to me. Seize that opportunity now, and save yourself a deal of
pain.”

Reinmar’s arms were still around Marguerite. She had relaxed into his grip
and was pressing herself against him, breast to breast. He knew that she had
heard every word, and that she was waiting with bated breath to hear his reply.

“I cannot,” he said. “Marcilla, I cannot.”

He could not be sure that Marguerite would be prepared to believe that he was
talking to Marcilla, and only to Marcilla, but he thought that it might be safer
if she did.

“Corrupted by discipline,” said the voice, regretfully. “If you could kill
for me, you’d find so much more pleasure in killing. You glimpsed that, I think,
in the instant before the fiend died. Can you not remember what killing ought to
be, my love? Must you make it a matter of duty and discipline?”

“Take the nectar and go, Marcilla,” Reinmar said, his voice raw with thirst.
“Take it, I beg you, and go.”

The hand moved away from his shoulder, but it was not withdrawn. Instead the
fingers reached up to put gentle pressure on his eyelids and deny him sight.

“Oh, my silly darling,” the voice said, “I could have done that at any time
since you stepped out of the underworld, but the game is not done yet. You do
not understand me at all, for all your yearning dreams.”

And with that, Reinmar found himself falling slowly into unconsciousness. His
throat was still desperately dry, but it proved in the end that he was even more
tired than thirsty. He faded away into delicious, dreamless sleep.

Reinmar awoke when water splashed his face. When he raised his head the rim
of a cup touched his lip and he drank avidly. He took the cup in his own hands
and drained it completely before looking up into the candlelit face of the man
who had given it to him.

“Godrich?” he said.

“That’s right,” the steward agreed. “What happened here, Master Wieland?”

For a moment, Reinmar did not even know where he was, but when his eyes had
taken in the wine-racks he remembered. His first thought was to look for
Marcilla, and it was not until he had registered the fact of her absence that he
became aware of the significance of the fact that there were others missing too.

Wirnt had gone. So had Marguerite. Did that mean that she had been taken
prisoner again?

Reinmar looked at the blank wall then, and saw a gap where a loose brick had
been carefully removed. He stood up, silently cursing the discomfort that
immediately afflicted his arms and legs. He looked into the hole, but there was
nothing there. He put his hand into the space, extending groping fingers into every cranny. If the phial had been there he would have been able to touch
it, but it was not. Had it ever been there, he wondered, or had the drama played
out in the cellar been a mere charade from beginning to end? Had Marcilla led
Wirnt to Ulick under false pretences, so that Ulick might smash the stone jar
upon his head?

Godrich was still waiting politely for an answer.

“My cousin Wirnt was here,” Reinmar told him. “He was looking for dark wine,
but Luther had taken the phial I brought from the valley. If Luther really did
hide what remained in here, I have no idea where it is now. What hour is it?”

“Three after noon,” Godrich told him. “You should come upstairs, if you can
walk. I’ve made a meal of sorts, though there’s nothing at all to be bought in
the market.”

“Three after noon! I must have slept the clock round, or very nearly.” Reinmar
consented to be led away in the direction of the stair, but he looked for his
sword first and was not at all pleased to find it gone.

“I dare say that you needed the sleep,” Godrich observed, as they began to
climb the stair, unhurriedly. “To judge by the state of your clothing, you were
in the thick of it.”

“Is it over?”

“Not quite, but the Reiksguard have matters under firm control.”

“The Reiksguard. Not von Spurzheim?”

“He’s dead. They suffered heavy losses reaching him, but reach him they did.
Vaedecker too, I’ve heard—and Sigurd. Your father’s safe, though.”