The Skin Map (10 page)

“I hardly know,” she replied. At least she was growing more comfortable with the language as, like a rusty pump that only required priming, the words began to flow more easily. “I was travelling with someone who has gone missing. There was a storm, you see, and I seem to have become a little confused.”

Englebert greeted this explanation with placid acceptance. “Travel can be very confusing, I find. And yes, the storm—it was very strong,
ja
?”

“
Jawohl!
” she agreed.
You have no idea
.

They continued along in silence. Mina gazed out at the drab countryside, all brown and grey beneath dark October skies—if it
was
still October; she assumed it was, but couldn’t be sure. The fields were small, and neatly kept behind their stone and wicker fences. Wooded hills clothed in the gold and brown of autumn rose to either side of the cobbled road and, here and there, she saw small slat-board houses, weathered grey, with shake shingles covered with moss, and whitewashed houses with low thatched roofs. It all looked so very old-timey. . . .

“What is the time?” she asked suddenly. “I mean, what year?”

“It is the thirtieth year of Emperor Rudolf ’s reign,” answered Etzel promptly. He seemed to sense that the confusion surrounding his hitchhiking companion encompassed not only place but time as well. “It is the Year of Our Lord 1606.”

“I see.” Wilhelmina’s brow lowered. It was bad enough when she had imagined she was in Cornwall. This was worse. But if anything was to be done about it, she failed to see what it might be. Don’t panic, she told herself. Something will come to you. Until then, you’ve got no choice but to roll with it.

“Are you hungry?” asked Etzel.

“A little,” Mina admitted.

“I myself am always hungry,” he proclaimed, as if it was a singular achievement. “Behind the seat you will find a
Tasche
,
ja
?”

Mina swivelled around in the seat, parted the cloth that covered the wagon and formed an entrance to the wagon box, and saw barrels and casks and large bags of what looked like flour, or maybe sugar. “Do you see it?”

“Here it is!” She spied a lumpy hopsack bag and snatched it up.

Placing it in her lap, she loosened the drawstring and folded down the sides to reveal half a loaf of heavy dark bread, a muslin-wrapped wedge of cheese, a scrag end of sausage, three small apples, and a crockery flask of something that appeared to be wine.

“Take whatever you wish,” Etzel invited. He reached over and broke off a chunk of bread. “Like so,
ja
?”

Mina followed his example, broke off some bread, and popped it into her mouth. It was chewy and flavoured with caraway—just like her mother and grandmother used to make. “All those barrels and bags in the back,” she said, speaking around a second mouthful. “Are you a travelling salesman?”

“
Nein, Fräulein
,” he replied, helping himself to an apple. “Try some cheese,” he urged. “To tell the truth, I have never before travelled outside Bavaria.”

“You are Bavarian?”

“
Ja
, I am from Rosenheim. It is a small town not far from München. You will not have heard of it.” He raised the apple to his lips, nipping it neatly in half in a single bite. “Do you like the bread?”

“Yes, very—it is delicious,” she replied.

“I made it,” Etzel confessed, a touch of shyness shading his tone. “I am a baker.”

“Really?” wondered Wilhelmina. “What a coincidence—I am a baker too.”

Etzel turned on his seat and regarded her, his blue eyes wide with surprise above his chubby pink cheeks. “There is no such thing as coincidence,
Fräulein
. I do not believe so.
This,
” he announced grandly, “is a most fortuitous meeting.”

“Fortuitous?” She puzzled over the word. “Fate, you mean?”

“Fate!” He said it as if the word itself was sour. His round cheerful face scrunched up in thought. “It is . . .” He paused, then declared with a shout of triumph, “Providence!
Ja
, it is Providence that has brought us together. You see, I am a baker who is in need of a helper.” He placed a hand on his chest. “And you are a baker in need of a friend, I think—and perhaps more,
ja
?”

It was, Mina had to admit, true.

He then revealed the reason for his trip to Prague. “Times are hard in Bavaria just now—all over Germany, too, I think. Very difficult. In Rosenheim I am a baker with my father and brother, but there is not enough business to support all of us anymore. My brother, Albrecht, has a family,
ja
, and what little trade we have, he needs it more than I do. I am second-born,” he said sadly, “and I have no wife, no children.” He paused, nodding to himself as if confirming that this was, in fact, the case. “Last month we sat down together the three of us and after many beers we made a plan. So! They are sending me to Prague to see if I can start a new business there.”

“Well, I hope it works out for you.”

“
Werks aus
?” The meaning escaped him. “
Arbeitet aus, klappen
?”

“Ah,
gelang
—succeeds, I mean.”

He nodded. “Do you know what they are saying?”

“No,” Mina admitted, liking his gentle manner. “What are they saying?”

“They are saying that in Prague just now, the streets are paved with gold.” He laughed. “I believe no such thing, of course. It is just a way of saying that things are better there.” He offered an amiable shrug. “I don’t say so myself. I only know things cannot be worse than they are in Rosenheim.” He nodded. “Things must be better there.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said.

The wagon bumped along, and as the dull day began to fade at last, they began to see a few more farms and houses scattered around the hillsides and beside the road and, finally, Hodyn
: a dishevelled little farming town. “We will see if there is an inn,
ja
?”

“All right,” agreed Wilhelmina doubtfully. “But I should warn you, I don’t have any money.”

“Not to worry,” replied Etzel. “In a town like this it will not cost much. I have a little silver.” He smiled reassuringly. “God willing, it is enough.”

CHAPTER 8
In Which Wilhelmina Proves Her Mettle

P
rague in 1606 was a fairy-tale city of massive encircling walls with high towers at every corner, huge gates of timber and iron, crooked streets filled with tiny houses whose roofs of red clay tiles almost touched the ground, and a fortified castle with turrets and a drawbridge. Green and yellow banners hung from the battlements, gilded angels kept watch over the city from the top of soaring church spires, and rising on a hill in the very centre of the city gleamed the sparkling whitewashed facade of a grand palace. To Wilhelmina it looked like something the Brothers Grimm might have concocted as a backdrop to a story about a spoiled prince and a selfless pauper. Mina had treasured such a book as a child and had always thrilled to the subtle horror of those antique stories.

“It’s like a dream,” she gasped upon seeing their imposing destination suddenly revealed in all its glory.

They had come upon the many-towered city quite without warning. The open, rolling countryside gave little hint of what was lurking just over the next hill. There was but a slight buildup along the road—a few more farms, a tiny settlement or two—and then, as they came over the rise, they were all at once confronted by the majestic city walls and a view of the imposing brown stone castle, flags aflutter in the breeze. A generous river skirted the southeastern quarter of the town, and a great many shacklike dwellings had been erected on the low ground. Englebert did not approve of this, as he imagined the area would be prone to flooding. “They should know better,” he huffed. However, he did approve of the hefty stone ramparts that encircled the city and the sturdy, ironclad city gates, and pronounced them very good work. “Strong walls are important,” he declared.

The weather had turned cold. There was a shimmering skin of frost on the grass and trees. Travelling in the country, they had the road mostly to themselves, but the traffic greatly increased the nearer they came to the gates. Englebert left his seat and guided the mules as they joined the slow-moving parade that included oxcarts, horse-drawn carriages, and more than a few hand wagons: mobile businesses of several varieties, all pulled by their proprietors—tinkers, shoemakers, weavers, carpenters, and the like—as well as scores of people on foot, and even a goat cart or two. Most of those on foot bore bundles on their backs: sticks, straw, rope, and bales of grass for fodder.

They passed through wide-open gates and rolled on into the heart of the city. Wilhelmina took in the sights and sounds—geese honking, dogs barking, and from somewhere she couldn’t see, the plaintive bleating of sheep—and the
smells
! The whole of Prague, so far as she could tell, stank of cheese and, unaccountably, apples. Why this should be so, she could not say, but under the pungent scent of rancid milk and rotting apples she detected, unmistakably, the sour, nostril-curling pong of the cesspit. The latter did not surprise her in the least since the gutters of the rough-paved streets ran with raw effluent, and there were mounds of garbage heaped willy-nilly over footpath and pavement everywhere she happened to cast her eye.

Englebert led his wagon directly into the spacious central square of the city, an area marked out and dominated by four immense buildings: a military barracks, a
Rathaus
, a guildhall, and the great hulking mass of a gothic cathedral. Numerous other structures crammed themselves between the larger buildings, wildly random in size and style—tall and thin brick next to short and squat half-timber, next to ornately plastered and painted and neatly curved facades—forming a sort of mad infill that gave the extravagant city square an outlandish, and slightly demented, character.

The sprawling open space hosted a generous number and variety of pedestrians, human and otherwise. A market appeared to be in full cry: merchants and customers haggling over the various wares on offer outside flimsily constructed booths; hawkers stalking, shouting for attention; dogs barking at ragged, quick-darting children; jugglers juggling, dancers prancing, and stilt-walkers swaggering through the milling throng.

All in all, Wilhelmina thought it breathtaking. And when Etzel announced, “Here is where I shall have my bakery!” she felt a genuine tingle of excitement.

“Why not?” she replied.

“
Ja!
” He beamed at her with his happy cherub face. “Why not?”

Etzel drove his wagon to a corner of the square where he found a stone trough and hitching post. He halted and climbed down, tied the mules to the post, and allowed them to drink. “We have arrived!” he called happily. “Our new life begins.”

His inclusion of her was so easy and natural, she accepted it herself. In any case, it was not as if she had any better option.

The strangeness, the utter impossibility of her plight, was not lost on Wilhelmina. But benign acceptance of the peculiar situation was steadily, stealthily creeping up on her. She had to keep mentally pinching herself to force her wandering and easily distracted mind to remember that what she was experiencing was in no way normal. Yet, bizarre though it surely was, more and more she was discovering that her otherworldly sojourn was also curiously compelling. The weird cavalcade of events exerted its own beguiling influence. Old-world Prague was winning her over.

Englebert was gazing about him with equal amazement. Finally, he drew himself up and turned to her. “I am wanting to ask you something,
Fräulein
,” he said, his voice taking on a note of unexpected gravity.

“Go on then,” she said warily.

“Would you watch after Gertrude and Brunhild for me?”

Mina gazed back in bewilderment.

He indicated the mules.

“Oh! Of course.”

“I will not go far,” he told her, climbing down from the wagon box.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stay right here.”

But he was already gone, disappearing into the wheeling, swirling traffic of the square. Mina sat in the wagon and continued soaking in the sights and sounds around her, trying to gain some measure of the place. Prague, she thought, in the thirtieth year of Emperor Rudolf the Second—is that what Etzel had said? What did she know about the seventeenth century? Not much. Nothing, really. Didn’t Shakespeare live in the 1600s? Or was it Queen Elizabeth? She couldn’t remember.

If she had ever once in her life given the realities of life in seventeenth-century Bohemia a fleeting thought—and she most certainly had not—she would have pictured a world of superstition and suffering where obscenely rich and powerful aristocrats oppressed the miserable mass of grimy peasants whose lives were nasty, brutish, and short. Yet the folk she observed bustling around her, while admittedly grimy and short, seemed a fairly happy lot—judging solely from the air of amiable bonhomie permeating the Old Town square. Everywhere she looked, people were smiling, laughing, greeting one another with formal handshakes and kisses. Uniformly dressed in dull browns and drab greens—long knee-length cloaks and breeches for men, and short bodices with long, full skirts for the women—they nevertheless seemed prosperous enough.