Aurelianus pushed back his bench and got to his feet. “I was just chatting with Brian. I’m not much of a beer drinker, actually—my share of the bock is all yours.” He bowed and walked quietly out of the room.
Bluto crossed to Duffy’s table and pulled up the bench at which Aurelianus had been sitting. “Speaking of beer...”
Duffy grinned. “Yes. Anna or Piff is in the kitchen. Why don’t you have them pour us a last pitcher of the schenk beer, eh?”
“Good idea. My God, what happened to your face?”
“I was attacked in my sleep by mice. Go get the beer.”
Bluto did, and for twenty minutes the two of them sipped cool beer and discussed the possible Turkish lines of attack, the weak points in the city wall, and various defense arrangements.
“Charles has got to send reinforcements,” Bluto said worriedly. “Pope Clement, too. Can it be they don’t see the danger? Hell, Belgrade and Mohács were costly defeats, yes. They were the stepping-stones to the Holy Roman Empire. But Vienna is the damned front door. If the Turks take this place, the next spot to hold the line will be the English Channel.”
Duffy shrugged. “What can I say? You’re right.” He poured the last of the beer into Bluto’s cup.
Shrub and a couple of the other yard boys had come in with ladders and were hanging cagelike grilles over the wall cressets. The hunchback watched them. “Really expecting a wild crowd tonight, aren’t you?”
“Evidently,” Duffy agreed. “Back when this place was a monastery they used to drag kegs out and have the bock festival in the street. It got pretty berserk sometimes. Easter, the bock beer, and Spring are all the same thing in everybody’s mind, and they really dive into it head first after a hard winter.”
Bluto drained his glass and stood. “Say, Duff, it must be half past four now. When should I make sure to be here, to be at least among the first in line?”
“I don’t know. Supper time, I guess.” He too stood up and stretched, yawning like a cat. “Maybe I’ll trot downstairs and ask Gambrinus. See you later.” He ambled off toward the cellar stairs, secretly hoping to get another advance taste of the Spring beer.
Duffy could hear someone moving about in the darkness below as he descended the stairs. “Gambrinus!” he called, but there was no answer. Remembering the petard he’d found on the brewery door, he closed his fingers around his dagger hilt and took the remaining steps as quietly as possible.
When he stood at last on the damp paving stones, he peered cautiously around the dim cellar, but didn’t see anyone. Maybe I’m now having auditory hallucinations to complement my moonlit-lake visual ones, he thought unhappily. Wait a moment! Who’s that?
A tall figure had stepped out of the shadows behind the brick chimney, and now crossed to a door set in the wall next to the high-set copper tubs; in a moment he had opened the door and stepped through into the blackness beyond. The Irishman had caught only a quick glimpse of the stranger, but had noticed that he was blond or red-haired, and wore a loose cloak fastened at the throat by one metal button.
Duffy had his dagger out and strode to the door. “Come out of there,” he barked.
There was only silence from the dark room beyond, and an intensification of the steamy malt smell.
Duffy retreated to the fireplace, picked up a coal with the tongs and held it to the wick of Gambrinus’ lantern. Armed now with the light, he returned to the doorway and peered warily into the stone-walled room revealed within. He couldn’t see anyone, and, assuming the intruder was hiding to one side of the door, leaped through with a whirl of the lantern and an intimidating yell.
The room was empty. “Enough now, what is this?” the Irishman snarled. Setting down the lantern, he examined the walls for evidence of a secret door, but found none. The floor was simply moist earth, and the high-ceilinged room contained nothing but a monstrous wooden vat, taller by half than Duffy, the broad slats of its sides green with the moss of decades, perhaps centuries.
Duffy was about to go back to the dining room and worry about this new symptom of madness when he noticed three big, discolored wooden spigots set in the side of the vat, one at chest level, one at knee level, and one only a dozen inches above the dirt floor. Tarnished brass plates were nailed above the spigots, and he looked closely at them. The top one read LIGHT; the middle one BOCK; and the bottom one was so scaled with verdigris that it was indecipherable, and he had to scrape at it with the edge of his dagger. After a minute he had got it fairly clean, and could read its single word: DARK.
Now what the hell, he thought, forgetting the elusive intruder in his immediate puzzlement. He glanced up and saw a number of pipes emerging from the cellar wall and entering the vat at the top. Can this thing, he wondered queasily, be substituting for the tun tubs of a normal brewery? Does the fermentation of all Herzwesten beer take place, as it appears to do, in this great moldy vat? I wonder if they ever clean it.
After extinguishing the lantern he made his way thoughtfully back up the stairs. Maybe, he speculated, that fair-haired man, whoever he was, led me into that room intentionally; wanted me to see that enigmatic vat.
He paused at the top of the stairs. I’ve frequently tasted Herzwesten Light, he thought, and every Spring I can have the Bock. What, though, is Herzwesten Dark, and why have I never heard of it?
Bluto had wandered off, and the only person, in the dining room besides Shrub and his helpers was Epiphany. She had wiped down the tables and washed and stacked the serving-boards for dinner, and was now slumped at the traditional employees’ table, wearily slurping small beer.
“Piff, my love,” the Irishman exclaimed. “Where have you been hiding?”
Epiphany started when he spoke, then smiled worriedly. “You’re the one that’s been hiding, Brian,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you all day. Anna tells me you were in a sword-fight last night. Good God!” she gasped as he approached her table, “How did your face get all scratched?”
“Oh, the usual monsters have been giving me a rough time. But I give them a rough time, too. Are you working dinner?”
“No, thank God.” She brushed a damp strand of gray hair back from her forehead. “I guess it’ll be a real madhouse.”
“It’s a madhouse anyway. I believe our employer is insane.” He reached across the table, picked up her beer and drank it off. “Let’s go up to your room. I’ve got a few things to tell you.”
She eyed him cautiously. “Brian, you look like an old tomcat: this season’s cuts crossing last year’s scars.” After a moment she grinned and stood up. “My room? This way.” Duffy followed her up the stairs, reflecting that it might still be possible to talk some of the old woman out of the girl.
Epiphany’s room, a narrow one overlooking the stables, was neat, but not intimidatingly so. Framed paintings leaned out from every wall, mostly religious canvasses of her father’s; though Duffy thought he recognized one as the work of Domenico Veneziano. A bird twittered manically in a cage that hung over a chessboard, the pieces of which stood unmoved in their four basic ranks. Duffy absently moved the white king’s knight to the third row, over the ridge of the pawns.
“Sit down, Brian,” Epiphany said. Duffy dragged a chair up from beside the dresser and sat down on it while she perched on the bed.
“Let’s see,” the Irishman said. “I don’t know where to start, Piff. Well. Do you know why Aurelianus lured me here from Venice?”
“To keep peace in the dining room... which you really—”
“Never mind. No. That was the story, yes, but he’s dropped hints that that’s not what he wanted me for at all. He thinks the Turks are coming to Vienna just to wreck this brewery, and he thinks—equally insane—that I can prevent them. Me, a stranger he just encountered at random hundreds of miles from here. And listen, that isn’t all, he’s got a madman’s explanation for everything. You think Suleiman is the head man of the Ottoman Empire? Not according to Aurelianus! No, it’s Ibrahim, the Grand Vizir, who also happens to be the son of an air-demon or something. And maybe you imagined Emperor Charles counted for something here in the West? Hell, no! There’s an old fisherman in the forests outside town that’s the real king.” Duffy kicked the bed post, secretly irritated to find some of his scornful incredulity feigned.