The City of Gold and Lead (The Tripods) (4 page)

He cleared his throat, spat and growled. The last remark, I thought, was possibly meant to be a joke. But I was not sure. He looked capable of carrying out the threat.

He went on, “You’ve arrived early, which is better than arriving late. It’ll take a day to load cargo, but we’re not due off for another three. We can leave a day early, but no more. So the first couple below have a two-day stint before they see the sky. Do you want to draw lots for it?”

I glanced at Beanpole. Two days on deck were vastly preferable to spending the time below. But there was the possibility of two days confined with the silent Fritz. Beanpole, his mind presumably working along the same lines, said, “Will and I will volunteer to stay below.”

Ulf looked at me, and I nodded. He said, “Just as you like. Show them where they can bunk, Moritz.”

A problem that had engaged Beanpole as we came down from the hill to the river bank had been the way in which the barges were propelled. They had no sails, and these, in any case, would have been of limited value in the confines of a river. They could go down, of course, easily enough with the current, but how had they come up to this point, against it? As we got nearer, we saw that the barges had paddle wheels in their sides, and Beanpole was excited by the thought that there might be some machine, surviving from the days of the ancients, which moved them.

The truth was disappointing. Each wheel had a treadmill inside, and the treadmill, on journeys upriver, was worked by donkeys. Trained for the task when young, they strained steadily forward and their exertions pulled the barge through the water. It seemed a hard and dreary life, and I was sorry for them, but they
were well looked after by Moritz, who was plainly fond of the beasts. They were worked very little on the downriver trips, and were pastured out whenever there was an opportunity. They were in a field not far from the river bank now, and would stay there till it was time for the
Erlkönig
to move. Until they came aboard, Beanpole and I stayed in their small stables, with the smell of donkey and fodder mixing with the smells of old cargoes.

The cargo this time was of wooden clocks and carvings. The people who lived in the great forest east of the river made these, and they were shipped downriver to be sold. They had to be loaded with care because of their fragility, and men came aboard the barge to see to this. Beanpole and I hid behind the bales of hay which were kept for the donkeys and did our best to stay quiet. Once I could not stop myself sneezing, but luckily they were talking and laughing loudly enough not to hear it.

But it was a relief when the two days were up and, in the early morning, the barge cast off and moved out into the river. The donkeys worked their treadmill—two at a time with one resting—and Beanpole and I drew straws for who was to take Fritz’s place on deck. I won, and went up to a dark blowy day, with a wind from the north that carried occasional gusts of rain. The air was wonderfully sweet and fresh after my confinement, and there were many interesting things to be seen, both on the river and around it. Westwards there was a great fertile plain, with people working in the fields. To the
east the hills stood up, with the black clouds pressing down over their wooded crests. I did not have much time, though, to admire the scenery. Ulf called me and made me get a bucket of water, a brush, and a handful of yellow soft soap. The decks, he observed truthfully enough, had not been scrubbed for some weeks. I could make myself useful by remedying that.

The progress of the
Erlkönig
was steady, but not fast. In the evening, before it was dark, we tied up on a long island where another barge was already moored. This was one of a number of staging posts that apparently ran the five-hundred-mile length of the river. Moritz explained to me that they were set a distance apart, which was calculated as a minimum day’s haul upriver. Going down with the current, one usually covered two stages easily in a day, but to achieve a third meant risking darkness falling before one got there. The barges did not travel by night.

We had seen no sign of Tripods during our journey from the White Mountains, through the valleys, to the river. During this day on deck, I saw two. Both were distant, striding along the western skyline, three or four miles away at least. But the sight of them gave me a shiver of fear, which took some subduing. For quite long periods it was possible to forget the exact nature of the mission on which we had embarked. Being reminded of it was a nasty jolt.

I tried to console myself with the thought that there had been no hitches so far, that everything was going well. It did not help much, but by the following evening even that small consolation had gone.

• • •

The
Erlkönig
stopped at the halfway stage. This was in a small town, a trading post. Moritz explained that Ulf had some business to conduct there. It would only take him an hour or so, but he had decided, since we were in advance of schedule, to stay over until the following morning. The afternoon lengthened, though, and there was no sign of Ulf returning. Moritz became more and more visibly nervous.

In the end he voiced his apprehensions. Ulf, it seemed, was a man who drank heavily on occasion. Moritz had thought he would not do so on this trip, in view of everything that hung on it, but if the business on which he was engaged had gone wrong and he had become irritated by that, he might have stopped at a tavern, intending to have a drink to soothe his temper, and one thing might have led to another . . . In a bad bout he might be away from the barge several days.

This was a discouraging thought. The sun dropped down in the west, and there was no Ulf. Moritz began to talk of leaving us on the barge and going in search of him.

The difficulty was that the
Erlkönig,
and Ulf and Moritz, were well known in this town. Already a couple of men had stopped by, to offer greetings, and chat for a while. If Moritz left, Beanpole would have to handle them (it was his day on deck), and Moritz was unhappy about that. Suspicions might be aroused. They were likely to quiz him in his role as a new apprentice—people on the river were curious about strangers, knowing each other so well—and he might be led into saying something which they would recognize as false.

It was Beanpole who suggested another way. We boys could go and look for Ulf. Choosing moments when no eye was watching, we could slip away in turn, and hunt around the taverns till we found him; then either persuade him to return or, at least, tell Moritz where he was. If we were questioned, we could pass as travelers from far parts: after all, the town was a trading post. It was not the same as having to answer questions about what we were doing on board the
Erlkönig.

Moritz was dubious, but admitted there was some point in this. Gradually he allowed himself to be persuaded. It was out of the question for all three of us to go searching for Ulf, but one might—Beanpole, since it had been his idea. So Beanpole went, and I at once started working on Moritz to let me go also.

I was helped by the fact that my importunity was matched, on Fritz’s part, by indifference. He made no comment and clearly was prepared to wait until things sorted themselves out without assistance from him. So, having allowed one to go, there was only one other for Moritz to consider. I wore him down, as I had known I would; he was more amiable than Ulf, much more amiable, but also less sure of himself. He insisted that I should be back within the hour, whether or not I found Ulf, and I agreed to that. I was tingling with the excitement of exploring a strange town, in a strange country. I checked that no one was watching the barge, then jumped quickly onto the quay and made my way along the waterfront.

The town was a bigger place than I had thought, looking at it from the deck of the barge. Fronting the
river there was a row of warehouses and granaries, many of them with three floors above the ground. The buildings were partly of stone but principally of wood, which was carved and painted with figures of men and animals. There were a couple of taverns in this stretch, and I looked in briefly though Beanpole, I guessed, would have covered these before me. One of them was empty, except for two old men, sitting with large mugs of beer (they were called
steins,
I knew) and smoking pipes. The other had perhaps a dozen men in it, but I could tell in a quick survey that none of them was Ulf.

I came to a road, running at right angles to the river, and followed it. There were shops here, and a fair amount of horse traffic, with pony traps and larger carriages and men on horseback. There were, I thought, a lot of people about. I understood why on coming to the first intersection. The crossing road, in either direction, was blocked by stalls, selling food and cloth and all kinds of goods. It was market day.

It was exhilarating, after the long winter of exercise and study, in the darkness of the Tunnel or on the bareness of the mountainside, to be once more among people going about their daily lives. And particularly exhilarating for me, who before fleeing to the White Mountains had known only the quietness of a country village. A few times I had been taken to Winchester for the market there, and had marveled at it. This town seemed to be as big as Winchester—perhaps even bigger.

I made my way past the stalls. The first was piled high with vegetables—carrots and little potatoes, fat
green-and-white spears of asparagus, peas and huge cabbages, both green and red. At the next there was meat—not simple cuts such as the butcher brought to my village in England; but joints and chops and rolls delicately decorated with dabs of white lard. I wandered along, gazing and sniffing. A stall was completely given over to cheeses, of a score of different colors, shapes, and sizes. I had not realized there could be so many. And there was a fish stall, with dried and smoked fish hanging from hooks and fish fresh caught from the river laid out along a stone slab, their scales still wet. Now, with the dusk gathering, some of the stalls were preparing to close down but most were busy yet, and the stream of people, threading their way between and past them was thick enough.

Between two stalls, one selling leather and the other bolts of cloth, I saw the opening to a tavern, and guiltily remembered what I was supposed to be doing. I went inside, and looked about me. It was darker than the taverns on the waterfront, full of tobacco smoke and crowded with dim figures, some sitting at tables and others standing by the bar counter. As I went up to look more closely, I was addressed from the other side of the bar. The speaker was a very big, very fat man, wearing a leather jacket with sleeves of green cloth. In a rough voice, with an accent that I could barely understand, he said, “What is it, then, lad?”

Moritz had given me some coins of the money used in these parts. I did what seemed the safest thing, and ordered a
Dunkles,
which I knew to be the name of the dark ale that was commonly drunk. The
stein
was larger
than I had expected. He brought it to me, with ale foaming over the side, and I gave him a coin. I drank, and had to wipe foam from my lips. It had a bittersweet taste, which was not unpleasant. I looked around for Ulf, peering into the many dark recesses, whose paneled walls carried the mounted heads of deer and wild boar. I thought for a moment I saw him, but the man moved into the light of an oil lamp, and was a stranger.

I felt nervous. Having a Cap I was, of course, counted as a man now, so there was no reason why I should not be here. But I lacked the assurance of someone who had been truly Capped and was aware, of course, of my difference from all these others. Having established that Ulf was not one of the figures sprawling at the tables, I was eager to be away. As inconspicuously as possible, I put the
stein
down and began to move toward the street. Before I had gone a couple of paces, the man in the leather jacket roared at me, and I turned back.

“Here!” He pushed over some smaller coins. “You’re forgetting your change.”

I thanked him, and once more prepared to go. By this time, though, he had seen the
stein,
and that it was two-thirds full.

“You’ve not drunk your ale, either. Are you saying it’s a poor brew?”

I hastily said no, that it was just that I was not feeling well. To my dismay, I realized that others were taking an interest in me. The man behind the bar seemed partly mollified, but said, “You’re not a Württemberger, by the way you talk. Where are you from, then?”

This was a challenge for which I had been prepared. We were to hail from outlying places, in my case a land to the south called Tirol. I told him this.

As far as allaying suspicion was concerned, it worked.

From another point of view, though, it was an unfortunate choice. I learned later that there was strong feeling in the town against the Tirol. The previous year at the Games a local champion had been defeated by a Tiroler and, it was claimed, through trickery. One of the others standing by now asked if I were going to the Games, and I incautiously said yes. What followed was a stream of insults. Tirolers were cheats and braggarts, and they spurned good Württemberg ale. They ought to be run out of town, dipped in the river to clean them up a bit . . .

The thing to do was to get out, and fast. I stomached the insults and turned to go. Once outside I could lose myself in the crowd. I was thinking of that and did not look closely enough in front of me. A leg was stretched out from one of the tables and, to the accompaniment of a roar of laughter, I went sprawling in the sawdust that covered the floor.

Even that I was prepared to endure, though I had banged one knee painfully as I landed. I began to get to my feet. As I did so, fingers gripped the hair that grew up through my Cap, and shook my head violently to and fro, and thrust me down once more to the ground.

I should have been thankful that this assault had not dislodged the false Cap and exposed me. I should also have been concentrating on what really mattered—getting
away from here and safely and unnoticed back to the barge. But I am afraid that I could think of nothing but the pain and humiliation. I got up again, saw a face grinning behind me, and swung at him in fury.