Harun’s nervousness while sneaking through the dark village was considerable, but nowhere near the same as when walking through it in broad daylight. The chance of him being spotted out here in his dark scribe's robes which one could almost mistake for those of a clergyman was really small. Allah, it seemed, favored his quest: he had sent stormy clouds to shut out the starlight from the world beneath, and there was a sharp wind rustling the trees which covered any sound of movement. Harun shivered and drew his gown closer around himself. If only Allah could have made the wind so conveniently rustling a bit warmer. But one could not expect everything, could one? Especially not in autumn.

Sounds were coming from up ahead. A hammer on anvil, Harun thought, although he had no great experience in the art of metallurgy. On the one hand, it was good that he was hearing the sounds of the hammer, because it meant he would not have to search for the smithy, on the other, however, it also meant that somebody was still in the smithy. Somebody who wasn't drunk, home from the tavern, but who was vigorously active, even at this unchristian hour. Harun was annoyed. If he, a heathen, acted like a heathen and decided to wander about at night – that was one thing. But couldn’t even the Christians behave like Christians and go to bed?

Then Harun wondered if he should wish for that. After all, the killer might have hidden the murder-weapon under his bed.

Suddenly, Harun remembered something. Everybody had been in the tavern that fatal night, all his ex-suspects. Only the remaining one had not been there. What, if this was not only due to some evil purpose? What, if he had stumbled on the only abstainer in the whole village of Sevenport for a suspect? That would make it incredibly difficult for him to sneak into Henrik's house. Why couldn't the smith be like every other Christian, flout Allah's holy commands and drink himself into a stupor every night?

There was nothing for it – Harun would just have to try his luck. He made his way through the maze of little houses towards the hammering sound. A reddish light came from the gaps between the rough boards of a wooden door. Was this the smithy?

Yes, that would have to be it. The sounds of hammering had stopped by now. However, one could see by the glow from inside, that the wall was made of stone, a rare privilege in villages such as these, that much Harun knew. A privilege which normally was only bestowed on churches and castles. But smithies were perhaps a special case. The lord of the castle needed a smith, and preferably one who was not likely to go up in flames along with his house from the first misguided spark.

Harun stood pressed against the stone wall now. It was cold, but it was less cold than having the icy autumn wind bite into your face all the time. The hammering started again, and was almost unbearably loud in this close proximity. And he was still outside the building. What a racket it would have to be inside he did not want to imagine. Having to suffer hearing that was sufficient punishment for murder in Harun's opinion. But the man Henrik was doing it for a living, wasn’t he? So he probably thought differently about it.

“No! Not there. Put it there. And then you get off to bed. Your Father will be home any minute now, and if he finds me letting you touch the hammer, he’ll flay the skin of me.”

Harun frowned. That could not be the voice of Henrik the smith, surely. It was young, boyish even.

“Yes, yes, I'm going! Don't worry.”

The answering voice was a squeak, even less likely to have come from the mouth of his suspect. Harun carefully approached the window of the smithy. The shutters were closed, but they were ruff work and in between the two wooden boards there was a gap through which Harun could see quite clearly into the interior of his villain’s lair.

It looked as though the villain hadn't come home yet. There was a big, rosy-faced youth with a hammer and a leather apron standing beside a steaming bowl of water. The smile on his face was not all that villainous, but the dangerous-looking heavy hammer in his right hand was enough for Harun to enlist him immediately as a possible accomplice.

The same could not be said of his little helper, though. Certainly, he was also holding a hammer, or trying to, but for all his efforts he did not manage to lift the heavy iron end from the ground. In the end, he heaved it up just about an inch, and then broke down, happily grinning, and panting like a pair of bellows.

“I did it! I did it.”

“Very good,” said the nameless accomplice. He pulled a still slightly smoldering horseshoe from the water bowl with iron tongs, and laid it beside another three of its kind on the anvil. “Now let go. I think I hear your father coming.”

He was right. Harun had been so intent on watching, he had not noticed the footsteps approaching from behind. He whirled around.

The smith nodded to him in passing. The passing took some time, since the man made three wobbly steps forward, only to make two equally unsafe ones back. In that haphazard way he slowly moved past, while smiling benignly at the scribe.

“G’dnight. Nice night, ain’t it?”

“Y- yes,” said Harun. “Very.”

“Nice to’ve met you.”

“I am very pleased to have met you, too.”

The smith took some time to find to knob on his door. Then it took him some more time to remember which way to turn it. Once inside, he was joyously greeted. Either the hammer had been put away in time or the youths didn't consider it necessary, taking into account Henrik's current state.

“Good evening, Master Henrik. Who was that you were speaking to out there?”

“W- what? Dideldi… Dideni... Didn’t know him. Nice chap, though.”

“A stranger? Loitering about the house?”

“Some foreign bloke… funny accent.”

“Marauders! Marauders and thieves!”

The apprentice stormed out of the house, hammer in hand. By that time, however, the marauder had already contrived his escape into the night, running back towards the castle, wheezing.

Well, at least he knew now that Herik was not abstinent.

*~*~*~*~*

Harun doubted whether the smith would remember his face come the morning. Nevertheless, the results of his nightly investigation had not been altogether satisfying. Accomplice or no accomplice, the apprentice was certainly going to be alert on the watch for the days to come, making any unnoticed entry into the house an impossibility. He did not like having to postpone his plans like this, especially when the only other thing to do was to continue his reading activities with Sir Christian.

Wenzel was still in a bad mood about having been asked to spy on a friend of his, and though Harun did not doubt he would bring the guard around to his point of view in the end, it would take time. Everything would take time it seemed. The viscosity of the situation, time flowing thick and slow as honey, started to unnerve him and so it was with a degree of relief he received the news that the next trip to Danzig was drawing closer.

The trip would take his mind this matter, a matter he currently could not do anything about. Also, the trip would by no means be as tedious as usual, for the accompanying guard this time was not one of the usual surly fellows, but Wenzel. Once away from the castle, Harun reasoned, Wenzel would no longer think of the murder and all its sinister implications. Thus, the journey would probably be the most enjoyable of its kind ever.

The scribe awaited the trip over the next days with mounting impatience. During their last meeting, on the day before Harun’s departure, Sir Christian pestered him with the names of a thousand pious books the scribe should be on the lookout for on the Danzig market. In the end Harun’s mind was spinning with the names of every pilgrim, pope and poop from St Peter to Pilate and he was thoroughly thankful when Sir Christian rose and wished him a good night.

He wasn't quite equally thankful for the wake-up call of the cock next morning, although for once he willingly rose and made his way downstairs. After all, he wanted to go on this trip, didn’t he? Yes, but perhaps not quite as early as this.

Breakfast done with, Harun went out into the castle yard, where Wenzel was waiting for him already, sitting on the cart, unnervingly fresh and fit.

“Up you get,” the guard called, as Harun approached at tortoise pace. “We’ve waited for you long enough. What were you doing in there? Trying to eat your breakfast bowl?”

“Ahlan, my friend,” grunted Harun. “Let me guess. You weren’t on night shift yesterday.”

“Aye,” said Wenzel, good-naturedly. “Beats me how you figure these things out.”

Without a response, Harun pulled himself onto the wagon, and sat down facing outwards, with Wenzel as a buffer between him and the grumpy coachman. The man appeared shortly afterwards, climbing on his wagon behind the horse with a disdainful grunt probably not directed at the horse.

“Hurry up,” Jan the driver called to the bondsman who was loading the last sacks of wheat onto the cart. “We’d better start out quickly, or we won’t reach the bridge today.”

“The bridge?” asked Harun, surprised. “But last time it took us a day and a half to reach it, and that was with no load on the wagon. What have you fed your horse this morning?”

Jan did not reply. Harun opened his mouth to repeat the question when Wenzel said: “There’s more and more trouble in the land these days. Better to get a river with a guarded bridge between us and the Prussians quickly. There’s people saying that with their stores plundered and their houses burned many a Prussian might look westward, even past a well-garrisoned castle, to get their hands on a wagon-load of wheat.”

“Accursed heathen pillagers,” breathed the driver.

“Mmhh,” said Wenzel, noncommittally.

The bondsman jumped onto the wagon, and they were off. Harun clasped the splintery wooden board on which he sat with both hands and held tight. He had never imagined that a cart horse, or any horse for that matter, could move so fast with thirty sacks of grain tugging at its shoulders. The coachman was clearly determined to make good progress.

There was not much chance for conversation on the way. Harun was content with not falling off the cart during the fastest and most uncomfortable land trip of his free life since he had escaped slavery. At the end of the day, they indeed had reached the bridge, crossed it, and halted on the other side. The sun had gone down by then. A pale moon was shining above them, his light reflected of the sides of the horse which were drenched with sweat. The poor animal’s panting was the only sound apart from the quiet rushing of the broad river waters.

“I think the horse’ll need a rest for a day,” Jan announced. “I’ve taxed it too much.”

“You don’t say.” Shakily, Harun climbed down from the cart. “I think, that might go for me as well.”

“What do you think?” Jan addressed himself to Wenzel, not looking in Harun’s direction.

“Oh, I think that this is an excellent spot for a night's rest,” Wenzel said immediately. His eyes strayed to the guard house at the stone bridge. “Within call of a few handy fellows, with travelers always passing by… unlikely we’d have to fear anything here.”

“And you?” Jan asked the bondsman, whose only response was a shrug.

“Two in favor, one who doesn’t care, it’s decided,” said Jan. He jumped down from the coach, ignoring both Harun’s presence-asserting clearing of the throat and Wenzel’s ensuing snigger.

While Jan rubbed down his horse and Wenzel, who, to Harun’s not inconsiderable surprise, had offered to cook for them, had gone off to practice the mysterious arts of those who knew bread from lead, Harun strolled around the cart to watch the bondsman who was checking that his load was secure. Harun, always eager to learn if the learning did not involve manual labour but only inquisitive questions, asked: “How was the harvest?”

“So-so,” the peasant grunted.

Harun stepped nearer and with the air of somebody who was sure of his superior intellect even when he didn’t really know what he was talking about, said: “But there must be more to sell than usual. The harvest from the new fields must have been good, on account of the ground having been…fertilizied. Yes, that was it. Fertilizied.”

The peasant turned away from him. Apparently, he was no more intent on conversation than Jan.

“Not so good, nay,” he grunted. “Not that much left.” And that was it.

Having exhausted his communicative possibilities regarding agriculture to the limit, Harun returned to Wenzel. The little guard in his shabby uniform was crouching over a carefully constructed campfire like a mother hen over her only egg. A few tentative, but confident flames were already seeking their way between the branches up into the air, spreading their glow to warm Harun, the guard, and the four glistening fish suspended from a stick in the latter’s right hand.

Harun’s mouth watered at the very sight of them. Four, and there were four people. Three people only if you practiced Jan’s peculiar way of counting – but the scribe doubted that Wenzel was so mathematically unconventional. That meant that one was for him.

“Wenzel,” he breathed, “where did you get those?”

Grinning, the guard pointed over his shoulder, from where, out of the darkness, the silken sound of running water could be heard.

“Fish do live in rivers, you know.”

“And you…”

“Well, it ain’t that hard. All one needs is a stick, a piece of string and a worm.”

Harun sat down.

“You have the most commendable talents, my friend.”

“Aye. And one doesn’t even need one Greek philosopher to learn them.”

“They look delicious.”

“They wouldn’t be. Not yet, anyway. But they will be in a few minutes. Salmon do take time.”

“Salm…oh, is that what this particular kind of fish is called?” Harun bent closer. He was curious to learn what exactly it was that would be pleasing his palate in a minute or two.

“Aye. Didn’t you know that? Isn’t there some learned book about what different kinds of fish look like?”

“Certainly not! My friend, you have an overactive imagination. How do you think anyone should set about something like that? By crawling through the dirt, collecting butterflies and beetles and birds? No true scholar would think of degrading himself thus.”

“Well, you would have to know. But the way you look at those fish over there, I bet you would be interested in degrading yourself now and again, if the result could land on your plate, ey?”

“I must admit you have a point. How does one get fish out of a river again? You mentioned a stick, and a string, and… what was the last thing? I can’t remember just now. Wait, it’s on the tip of my tongue….”

Wenzel waited, but nothing came.

“No sorry.” Harun shook his head. “I can’t remember.”

“No problem.” The guard’s mouth twitched. “I’ll show you. That’s what friends are for, after all.”

He picked up something from the ground, and held it up. Harun narrowed his eyes, trying to see what the flesh-colored, glossy little twitching thing was. Then he realized what it was, and recoiled from the little worm in Wenzel's hand.

“Want a lesson in fishing?” Wenzel asked innocently.

“No, Shukran!”

“I’ve got plenty of them left. Look.” He picked up another from the ground. “They’re quite nice. Of course, you have to skewer them to get started, but that makes them stop moving, and, I think that makes them even nicer. Some people just can’t stand the way they squiggle about and around, you know.”

“I know. I’m one of them. So will you take these ghastly animals out of my sight please? I am a man of the intellect! It is not appropriate for me to have anything to do with such disgusting creatures. Get them away!”

Wenzel sighed. “Oh, very well.” He threw the worms over his shoulder, picked up the stick with the salmon, which by now were deliciously brown, stood up and started to walk away.

“Not the salmon,” said Harun, remarkably quick on the uptake for the late hour. “I wasn’t referring to the salmon, only the worms!”

Grinning as broadly as you possibly could without splitting your head in two, Wenzel replaced the skewered supper and turned it. The smell that was now wafting from the fish was enough to make one forget there even existed such a thing as gruel.

“I think that’s it,” Wenzel said after a little while, bending forward to examine his handiwork. “Or do you want your 'disgusting creature' well done?”

“It is fine as it is, Shukran.”

“Here you are.” The guard handed him a salmon. “And now be off before Jan sees I have wasted a perfectly good fish on an abominable heathen. It’s bad enough him ignoring one of the party, but if he starts to ignore of me too now, keeping the conversation flowing might get a bit difficult.”

Harun took the fish and thankfully hurried away into the night.

“You two!” he heard the guard shout behind him to the other two men. “Dinner time!”

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I'm now going to eat dinner, too, but not salmon :-) Hope you liked the chapter!!

By the way, I've written a short story (also historical fiction) called 'The Saxon's Seven Shirts' which is based on a real, funny little historical accurance. If you want to have a look, click on the external link. I'd be glad for your feedback :)

Cheers

Robert