CHAPTER FIVE

Burgomeister Steiner was a large, florid man with the beginnings of a double chin and a taste for overly ornate waistcoats. Unlike Magnus he was a stickler for the distinctions of social rank, so there was no question of Rudi being treated like a guest in his house. The young messenger simply knocked at the elaborately carved door of the Steiner mansion, handed the note to the liveried manservant who answered it, and loitered outside in response to the peremptory request to wait until it became clear whether an answer was required. After a few moments the door creaked open again, and Rudi peeled himself away from the wall he’d been leaning on and tried to look attentive.

“So you’re young Walder.” To his surprise it was the burgomeister himself standing there, not the servant. Dumbstruck, Rudi nodded, unsure of the correct way to address so illustrious a person. He knew Steiner by sight of course, everyone in Kohlstadt did, but he had never been spoken to by the man before, and had never expected to be. “Do you have a moment?”

“Of course.” A moment for what? Surely he wasn’t supposed to enter the burgomeister’s house?

Apparently not. Steiner came out to meet him, staying in the shelter of the porch. His eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun like one of the gargoyles perched on a finial above his head.

“Is there a reply?” Rudi asked after a moment, taking his best guess at the reason for the burgomeister’s interest. Steiner shook his head.

“No. The note was simply to inform me that certain items I ordered from Herr von Blackenburg have now arrived.” Rudi surmised that these were more fancy waistcoats. “I just wanted to meet the young man who so valiantly warned us of the peril we face.”

“I didn’t really do anything,” Rudi said, unsure of how to respond. “And I’m not sure there is much of a peril anymore.” Steiner’s dark eyes glittered with an intelligence that was at odds with his indolent exterior.

“Your father and Sergeant Littman are of a similar mind. They believe the beastmen to have gone in search of easier pickings than our stoutly-defended little community.” He broke off and gazed at Rudi, taking in his dishevelled appearance for the first time. “What happened to your face?”

“I got kicked by a boar,” Rudi said, hardly inclined to discuss his morning’s adventures with someone in authority. Steiner looked sceptical, but let it go.

“I see.” He gathered his thoughts with an effort. “I wanted to ask what you thought.”

“Me?” Rudi felt confused for a moment. “What more could I tell you?”

“You’d be surprised.” For a moment the trace of a smile appeared on Steiner’s face. Rudi remembered that despite appearances the burgomeister had a sharp and incisive mind. “You’re observant, and you know the forest well.”

Rudi felt his head begin to spin, and for a moment assumed it was the after-effects of Fritz’s punch. Then it hit him. The most powerful man in the village wanted his advice. For as long as the current emergency lasted, he would have the acceptance and status in the community he had always longed for. Perhaps it was that reflection which shaped his reply.

“My father and Sergeant Littman know far more about these things than me, and if they say the beastmen are gone then they probably are,” he began. “But I’ve been thinking. All the stories say they live purely for killing and plunder. If they really have moved on, why haven’t we heard about raids elsewhere in the valley?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Steiner nodded, a pleased expression on his face. “It seems to me that they’re biding their time, waiting for us to grow complacent. And unfortunately we might have to relax our precautions a little earlier than I would consider prudent.”

“Why’s that?” Rudi asked, before realising what he had done. Appalled at his own temerity for addressing the burgomeister as an equal he felt the breath constrict in his throat for a moment. Then he realised that, far from being outraged, Steiner was smiling again.

“A very astute question. I can see I was right about you.” He hesitated for a moment. “And let me answer it with a question of my own. You run a great many errands for Herr von Blackenburg, do you not?”

“Yes, I do.” Rudi nodded hesitantly, reluctant to discuss his work for Magnus with anyone else. The merchant had always said he valued his discretion. “But his business affairs…”

“Are no concern of mine,” Steiner reassured him. “But you deliver messages for him all over the valley, or so he tells me.”

“That’s right.” Rudi nodded again. Steiner continued, pursuing the point.

“So you would see more of what goes on in the district than almost anyone.”

“I suppose so.” Rudi had never considered the matter before, but it seemed a reasonable assumption. “I get about quite a bit.”

“Good.” Steiner lowered his voice a little, even though a quick glance up and down the street was enough to show that there was no one else within earshot. “And have you noticed anything unusual in the last few weeks?”

“Unusual in what way?” Rudi asked. Steiner shook his head.

“I don’t want to put any ideas in your head that aren’t there already.”

“Well then.” Rudi shrugged. “Some of the fields are looking a little sickly. The livestock too.” Several of the farms had been hit by cabbage blight in the last couple of weeks, and only yesterday the Heimdahls had been complaining that their milk cow had dried up for no apparent reason.

“Sickly.” His choice of words evidently had some resonance for the burgomeister, as he repeated it thoughtfully. “And the people?”

“Tired, I suppose. Some of them, anyway.” Rudi said.

“Sickly too, you might say?” Steiner looked intently at Rudi as he considered the question.

“You might say that,” he conceded. Steiner looked thoughtful, as though his worst fear had been confirmed. Then he came to a decision. He reached into the pouch at his belt, and produced a sealed note and a couple of coppers.

“I’d be very much obliged,” he said, “if you could take this note to Greta Reifenstal. As quickly as possible.” Rudi felt his mouth go dry. Of all the destinations he might have been dispatched to, the Reifenstal’s cottage was pretty close to the last place in the Empire he would have chosen. Particularly now. But maybe Hanna wouldn’t be there, and it did seem important.

“I’ll do it now,” he said, hoping he wouldn’t regret it.

To his thinly disguised dismay, it was indeed Hanna who opened the door of the Reifenstal’s cottage in answer to his reluctant knock. It wasn’t the first time he had been there of course, there was the evening he’d run to fetch Greta after his father had stumbled back to their hut bleeding from the wounds he’d sustained from his fight with the boar. But most of the time he avoided the place, so walking up to it in daylight was a strange sensation. The general shape of the building was familiar, it was not so different from a score of other cottages in the hinterland around the village despite its proximity to the forest, although some fresh details were revealed as he approached it.

The most obvious feature was the neatly tended rows of plants around the door, chosen, he supposed, for their medicinal properties as they were generally far from ornamental. Occasionally, as he passed by in the distance, he had seen Greta tending them, her habitual headscarf bright against the vegetation and the dull brown walls of her home. He had hoped to find her out of doors this time, but the garden around the house had been empty when he approached it, so with a heavy heart he had steeled himself to knock. A couple of scrawny chickens pecked hopefully in the dirt around his feet as he rapped his fist against the worn timber.

“What do you want?” Hanna asked as she opened the door. A half smile of welcome dropped from her face like a stone down a well. Then she seemed to recollect something. “Changed your mind about that poultice?”

“No, I’m fine,” Rudi began curtly, before recalling that she had tried to help him earlier, and deserved some gratitude for that. “Thank you. I have a message for your mother.” He held up the sealed note like a talisman, hoping to impress her.

“Oh.” Hanna glanced at the crest embossed into the sealing wax. Then she turned and called into the gloom behind her. “It’s a letter from Steiner.” Before Rudi could register his shock at hearing her refer to the burgomeister in such a familiar tone the girl had turned back to him. “I suppose you’d better come in.”

Rudi wasn’t sure what he expected to discover as he followed her across the threshold, but was vaguely surprised to find himself being conducted into a bright and cheerful room quite at odds with the vague idea he had of noisome potions and strange rituals.

There was a large wooden table, freshly scrubbed, which evidently did double duty for eating and preparing herbal remedies judging by the two bowls containing the residue of stew at one end, and the collection of dried herbs laid out at the other. Yellow curtains fluttered in the breeze from the unshuttered windows, and a couple of carved wooden chairs with brightly patterned patchwork cushions stood next to the fireplace. Despite the summer warmth a blaze was roaring away in it, heating a brass cauldron suspended from a hook on a chain. Rudi felt the sweat start out on his face almost at once. Hanna and Greta, who was busily stirring some concoction inside the vessel, seemed scarcely aware of it.

“Hello, young man,” Greta greeted him cheerfully and stood, handing the spoon to her daughter as she did so, and wiped her hands on her apron. Hanna took her place beside the fire and resumed the slow agitation of the bubbling liquid. “What’s this all about?”

“I don’t know.” Rudi handed her the letter, and watched with barely concealed curiosity as she broke the seal and unfolded it. Surrounded by the accoutrements of her profession, Greta made the act of reading seem more magical than ever. Bottles and jars of substances he couldn’t identify stood on the shelves of an old wooden dresser, next to an icon of Shallya, the goddess of healing, that had been mounted in a curious frame of gently curving arcs. There were flowers in vases there too, which seemed to serve no practical purpose.

“Hmm.” Greta read on, looking thoughtful. Gradually the lines of a frown began to etch themselves on her forehead. Whatever the note contained, the news was surely not good.

“Here. Make yourself useful.” Hanna turned from the fire to face Rudi, and gestured to a large earthenware pot sitting on the table next to the herbs. A square of muslin lay beside it. “Put the cloth over the bowl for me.”

Baffled, Rudi picked up the piece of material and did as she instructed, covering the opening of the pot.

“Good. Now hold it in place.” Hanna lifted the bubbling cauldron off the hook above the fire and carried it over to the table. Wafts of sweet-smelling steam escaped the surface, pleasantly tickling the back of Rudi’s nose as she approached.

“What do I do now?” he asked, trying to mask the edge of apprehension, which was doing its best to nudge its way into his voice.

“Nothing. Just stand there and try not to get burned.” She was probably joking, he told himself, but this was Hanna after all, and it was hard to be sure. She tilted the cauldron carefully, pouring the liquid it contained into the slight depression in the middle of the cloth. For a moment Rudi thought it was going to spill. He fought down the impulse to flinch, but after a moment the fluid found the pores of the material and began to flow through it, leaving behind a residue of scum and what looked like fragments of leaf and tree bark.

“Very good,” Greta had approached the table unnoticed, as he remained intent on the delicate task. “Maybe you’ve missed your vocation.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Rudi hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.

“I suppose not,” Greta smiled at him, as though looking deeper than his outer appearance. “But you won’t be a forester all your life, you can be sure of that.”

“Why not?” The question came to his lips unbidden. Despite her friendliness Greta had strange powers, everyone knew that, and what in anyone else’s mouth would have been a simple pleasantry became charged with hidden meaning when she said it. Perhaps she was a seer as well as a healer. Perhaps he had some strange and magnificent destiny, and only she could see it. The woman smiled again, an everyday sign of friendliness, completely devoid of any deeper significance.

“You’re a bright lad. The gods have a way of finding a use for qualities like that, but it’s up to you to take the opportunities as they come. And something tells me you’re not the kind to let them pass you by.”

“I see.” He didn’t really, but he sensed that somehow she’d paid him a compliment.

“What did old Steiner want?” Hanna asked, as the last of the liquid left the cauldron. Greta shrugged.

“He wants to talk to me. About the fever cases.”

“Oh,” Hanna shrugged too, as though the matter was of little importance. “I don’t know what else he expects. If you start cramming people together behind a wall every night, then of course you start spreading diseases.”

“Diseases?” Rudi asked. Hanna looked at him disdainfully.

“I don’t suppose you’d notice living out in the forest, but a few of the villagers are getting sick. It’s the overcrowding.”

Rudi hadn’t, but then he didn’t interact with the majority of the villagers. He cast his mind back over the events of the day, trying to remember if anyone he’d met seemed unwell. There was Kirstin, of course, but she always looked like that, and had done ever since she started working for Magnus, if not before. Then there was Hans Katzenjammer, whose injuries seemed infected, but that would be due to the thorn bush he’d stumbled into. No one else seemed particularly afflicted. That is, apart from his father, of course, but his arm seemed fine except for the rash. Besides he wouldn’t have felt comfortable betraying Gunther’s confidence by mentioning that to the healer, so he held his tongue.

“No, I hadn’t,” he said. Then another thought struck him. This must have been what the burgomeister meant when he said they might have to relax their precautions against the beastmen earlier than he would have liked. If trying to keep everyone safe had simply exposed them to another kind of danger, then the burgomeister was faced with an extremely unenviable choice. No wonder he wanted to talk to the healer as quickly as possible; after all, he’d had the letter all ready to send, and Rudi’s arrival with the note from Magnus had been an opportunity too fortuitous to ignore.

This was too much for a simple forest lad to take in all at once, he told himself. He cast around for a distraction. Hanna was lifting the cauldron away from the bowl now, and he reached out to take hold of the handle.

“Here,” he said. “Let me help…”

“Look out!” Hanna’s voice took on an unmistakable air of alarm, and for a moment he failed to understand. Then his hand closed around the metal, and a searing pain scorched across his palm.

“Sigmar’s hammer!” The heavy brass pot clattered to the floor as his arm jerked reflexively, tearing it from the girl’s grip. Tears of pain flooded his eyes, and he clenched his throbbing fist.

“Open your hand,” Greta sounded calm and reassuring, as she always did attending to an injury. Fighting against instinct he did as she instructed, and waited while she inspected the damage. She shook her head sympathetically. “It’s just a minor burn. This should help.” She plucked one of the jars from the stockpile Rudi had noticed before, and spread some of the salve it contained across his agonised palm. It felt cool and soothing, muting the pain to a faint, barely perceptible throbbing, like the tingling of his hands on a frosty morning.

“I did try to warn you,” Hanna said, an unaccustomed tinge of defensiveness edging into her voice. She bent to pick up the cauldron, now slightly dented, and hung it on the hook over the fireplace without the faintest hint of discomfort. “I’m a bit more used to handling hot things.”

“So I see.” Rudi watched her with studied nonchalance, determined not to seem too perturbed by the incident. He felt vaguely embarrassed for making such a fuss over a simple domestic task the two women evidently thought nothing of, and brought the conversation back to business as quickly as possible to cover it. “Was there a reply to the message?”

“Just tell him I’ll come as soon as I can,” Greta said, “and not to worry. I’m sure the situation isn’t as bad as all that.”

“Right,” Hanna shrugged. “It’s not as though anybody’s died, is it?”