CHAPTER NINE

GOLDMUND knew this country from many rides. Away beyond that frozen pool stood a barn, owned by the knight; further, a peasant holding where he had friends: in one or the other he might have to seek shelter and a sleeping-place, and all the rest could keep till tomorrow. Little by little there stole upon him the old sense of freedom and fresh adventure, which for a while had almost been forgotten. True that on this surly winter's day adventures looked frozen and uninviting, true they would be pinched, famished, and difficult, and yet their hard untrammelled necessity came as a kind of salve, almost a balm, to his blunted senses and all the confusion in his heart.

He ran on until he was tired out. No more riding now, he said to himself. Oh, wide world! The snow had almost ceased to fall. Ragged lines of woods away in the distance seemed to mingle with the grey clouds above them, stillness to stretch on and on, as far as the end of the world. What had become of poor, frightened Lydia now? He pitied her from his heart, and thought with tenderness of her, as he lay down to rest by a frozen stream, beneath a bare, solitary ash. The cold pricked him up; he rose, stiff in every limb, and by degrees fell into a run, since the grey, dull light seemed already fading.

He thought of nothing, as he tramped over empty fields. What was to be gained by thoughts or feelings, no matter how fair and tender they might be? He must keep warm, and find some refuge for the night, keep alert, as a fox or marten, in the rigour of this frozen world, and, if he could, not let himself perish in icy fields: nothing but that was worth considering.

He turned in surprise, and peered about him, since he seemed to hear a horse's hoofs, far off. Had they sent out to hunt him down, then? He drew his little hunting-knife from his pouch, to ease the blade in the wooden sheath. Then he caught sight of the distant rider, and recognized a horse from the knight's stable. It cantered stubbornly in pursuit of him: any attempt to fly would have been useless, so he waited, without actual fear, yet tense with expectation and curiosity, his heart beating faster and faster. A thought leapt into his brain. 'How good if I could manage to kill this rider! I should have a horse and so the world would be mine.' But when he saw the horseman, Hans, the stableboy, with his light, watery-blue eyes and silly moon face, he laughed at himself. He would have to have been made of stone to slay such a kind, honest simpleton. He greeted Hans as a friend, and gently patted Hannibal, his horse, which knew him at once, as he stroked down its warm, damp neck.

'Whither away, Hans?' he asked the lad.

'To you,' grinned Hans, with flashing teeth. 'You've tramped a bit already, haven't you? Well, now I've found you, I can't stay. I was only to greet you, and give you this.'

'From whom do you greet me?'

'From Mistress Lydia. Ah, you've brought us a sour day, Magister Goldmund. I was glad to be able to get off for a bit. Master must never know I've come forth with a message, or he'd string me up as soon as look at me. Well, take it, then.'

He held out a package to Goldmund.

'Tell me, Hans, have you any bread in your wallet?'

'Bread? I dare say there's still a crust.' He rummaged and drew out a chunk of rye-bread. He turned his horse.

'How is it with Mistress Lydia?' Goldmund asked. 'Did she send you no message, nor a letter?'

'No. I only spoke with her a short while. Bad weather at home, I tell you. The master walks up and down like King Saul. Well, I have this to give you, and no more, Master Goldmund. Now I must hurry back.'

'Yes, but only a minute. Hans, could you give me your hunting-knife? I have only my little one. If wolves come out and – well, it would be better for me if I had a good knife in my hand.'

But of this Hans would hear nothing. He would take it very ill, he said, should any misfortune befall Magister Goldmund. But his jack-knife, no – he could never give that, no, not for gold, not even in exchange for a better one. Oh no, he could never give it, not if good Saint Genevieve were to ask it of him. Now he must urge his horse, he wished Godspeed, and he was sorry.

They shook hands, and the lad rode off again, while Goldmund stood looking after him, with an odd grief in his heart. Then he undid the package, pleased with the good, stout, neat-leather cords that bound it. It was a woven undershift, of strong, grey wool, and seemingly Lydia's handiwork, made to his measure. Wrapped in the wool was something hard – a side of bacon – and, in the bacon, a little slit, and, stuck into the slit, a clear gold ducat. No letter came with all of this.

He stood in the snow with Lydia's gift, and hesitated: then he stripped off his jerkin, and pulled on the woollen shift, which warmed him, wrapping his cold body. Quickly he pulled his jerkin over it, and the ducat he hid in the deepest pouch, bound the leather strings tight round it, and went on his way over snowfields. It was time to seek out some sleeping-place, since now he was feeling very weary. He would not go to any peasants' huts, although he might find a warm shelter in them, and a bowl of milk to his supper: he had no wish to gossip, ans answer their questions.

He slept in snow, rose up at daybreak, and trudged over frost in a sharp wind, urged to forced stages by the cold. For many nights he would dream of the old man with his sword, for many days loneliness and sorrow would grip his heart.

In a village where poor peasants had no bread, but only millet broth to give him, he found a shelter, some few days later, at nightfall. Here new adventures awaited him. A woman, whose guest he was, dropped her child in the night, and Goldmund was present at the birth. They had roused him up from his straw to help them, although in the end they had no work for him, save to hold a rushlight, while the midwife did her business. That was the first birth he had ever seen and, suddenly made rich with a new experience, he stared with surprised and shining eyes at the face of this woman in labour. It seemed, at least to him, that what he saw in the mother's face was worth the noting. Something he would never have looked to see was revealed to him there in the torchlight. As this groaning mother screamed her pain, the twisted lines of her face differed little from those he had seen in the moment of love's ecstasy, on the faces of the women he had clasped. True, the look of agony in this face was more strongly marked, and therefore clearer than any of supremest pleasure. But what lay beneath was the same: the almost grinning drawing together of the features, the same glow, the same extinction. He marvelled much at his sudden thought: pleasure and pain can be as like as sisters.

He had another experience in this village. For the sake of a neighbour's wife, whose eye caught his on the morning following this childbirth, and who speedily heard his supplication, he lingered a second night in the village, pleasing her well, since this was his first appeasement, after all the deceptions and longings of many weeks. And this delay brought his adventure. Because of it, on his second day's sojourn here, he fell in with a tall, bold fellow, Victor, seemingly half-cleric, half-vagabond, who greeted him with a Latin tag, and proclaimed himself a wandering scholar, though long past the age for universities. This fellow, with his stubbled, pointed chin, met Goldmund with a kind of comradeship, a vagabond's humour, which soon had won him a young companion. On Goldmund's asking where he had studied, and wither his journey might be leading him, this strange brother ranted out the following:

'By my poor lost soul I have frequented enough high seats of learning. I have been in Paris and Cologne, and seldom has a more pregnant word been uttered on the true metaphysics of the horse-sausage than by me, in my dissertation at Leyden. Since then, amice, I have wandered, a poor scholar, through German lands, my little soul racked and tormented by unappeased hunger after knowledge. I have been called the peasant-wenches' scarecrow, and my mystery is to instruct young harlots in Latin, and exorcise the sausages from their chimney-pieces into my belly. The King of Bohemia is my brother, and the All-Father nourishes us both, though, in my case, I have the most labour of doing it, and, two days since, hard-hearted as are all fathers, he intended so to misuse me as to save the life of a famished wolf with my poor carcass. Had I not struck down that wolf, Master Colleague, you would not now have the honour of making my reverend acquaintanceship. In saecula, saeculorum, Amen.'

Goldmund, still unversed in the gallows-humour of this sort, felt drawn towards something in this tough vagrant, although he disliked the harsh laugh in which the man applauded his own jests, and the long, unshaven face scared him a little. Still, he was easily persuaded to take him as companion on the roads since, whether or no his tale of the slaughtered wolf had been a brag, two were always stronger and safer than one. But Victor refused to set out again till, as he said, he had taught a little Latin to the peasants, so he quartered himself in the village for one more night. His way of going to work was not like Goldmund's in all his wanderings till that time, when he asked for shelter in a village. Victor slunk along from hut to hut, gossiping with a woman at every doorway, poking his long nose in stalls and kitchens, loathe to go on his way until he had taken tribute at every house. He had tales of the war in Italy for each goodwife, squatting beside the fire, and bawling out the song of the fight at Pavia, with a certain cure for the grand-dam's falling teeth and rheumy legs, stuffing his jerkin down to the belt with nuts, shavings of pear, and bits of bread. He had been in every place, it seemed, and knew all knowledge. Goldmund sat watching him open-mouthed, as he fought his unending fight for victuals, flattering some and scaring others, bragging to set them gaping, ranting Latin tags and playing the scholar, fuddling their wits with chequered knaveries, his sharp eyes straying all the while from face to face, noting each half-open cupboard, each loaf, the nail for every key. Young Goldmund saw that this was a seasoned vagabond, weathered to sun and frost, and one who had lived in many climes, gone cold and hungry for many years, and so grown insolent and cunning, in the bitter fight for perilous, uncertain life. Such was the end of those who stayed too long on the highways. Would he, too, be like it one day?

Next morning they jogged out together and, for the first time, Goldmund had a companion. By their third day he had learned many things. To satisfy the three first needs of vagrants; security from mortal danger, shelter from the cold, and a full belly, had grown less a thought, with Victor, than an instinct. Long years on the roads had taught him much, and so he was past master of many arts; could tell from imperceptible signs the nearness of any human habitation, even in the dark, or in deep snow; knew to a hair which place in a wood or field it were best to sleep or sit to rest in; could see, the very instant he entered a room, the exact degree of its owner's riches or poverty, how good-hearted he was, or curious, or fearful. His young companion listened eagerly, but when Goldmund once answered his advice by telling him he made a mistake to approach human beings with so much guile, and that he, although quite ignorant of these arts, had seldom been refused hospitality when he asked for it in friendly words, the tall, spare Victor laughed, and answered good-humouredly:

'Well, little Goldmund, you are in luck, no doubt. You are so young, and look so brave, and seem such a handsome, innocent seraph, that your looks make you worth keeping for the night. You please the women, and the men say: “There's no harm in him. Why, he couldn't so much as hurt a fly”. But listen, my young friend, youth fades; the angel's face gets a stubble on it; wrinkles come, and hose need patching, so that, before a man knows where he is, he has turned into an ugly, ill-looking guest, with only hunger in his eyes, in place of all the sweet, pretty innocence: and then he must know something of the world, or soon he'll be lying out on the dung-heap, with every cur in the village to come piss on him. But I think you'll not stay long on the roads. You have too dainty hands and fine yellow hair. You'll soon creep off where you find you can have a better life, into some large, warm marriage bed, or some fine, fat little cloister, or a warm, snug scrivener's room. Why, with that fine cloth on you back you might be a junker.'

Still laughing he passed his hands over Goldmund's jerkin, who felt his fingers, touching and seeking in every pocket. He drew off, remembering his ducat. Then he told of the knight's castle, and how he had earned these good, new clothes with his Latin, till Victor could not understand how he had left such a snug nest in midwinter, and Goldmund, unused to lying, let him know a little of Julia and Lydia. This brought these two companions their first quarrel. In Victor's eyes Goldmund had been a fool without his fellow, to run off so, with no more ado, leaving the castle and its maids in the keeping of their good Father in heaven. This must be remedied, and soon he would have a plan for doing it. Together they would seek out that castle, and though Goldmund, of course, must never show himself, Victor, his friend, would care for all the rest. He must write a little love-message to Lydia: with that as his warrant his friend would be welcomed, and by God's wounds! would never leave the stronghold again without this or that in gold or gear as his recompense. And so he gossiped; till Goldmund, having refused, at last grew angry, and would not hear another word of the matter, or let Victor learn the knight's name, or where his castle might be situated.

When Victor saw him so ruffled he laughed again, and feigned good-fellowship. 'Well,' he grinned, 'bite all your teeth out if it pleases you. All I will say to you, young sir, is that you make us both miss a good catch, and that is not the way of a kind colleague. But you'll hear nothing, it seems; you are a rich knight, and will ride back again, storm the castle, and carry off the wench on your charger. Boy, your head's stuffed full with humours and foolery. All's one: I'll be content to jog at your side until our shoes freeze off our feet.'

Goldmund sulked until evening. But since, at sundown, they had no shelter, nor could see any trace of human kind, he was thankful enough to let Victor pick their sleeping-place, help him build their couch with pine-branches, and rig up a shelter by the wood's edge, between two tree-trunks, against the wind. They munched good bread and cheese, out of Victor's bulging wallet. Goldmund, now ashamed at his anger, showed himself tractable and helpful, offering his companion his woollen shift for the night, and undertaking the first watch, when they agreed to watch by turns, and keep off wolves. The other lay down to sleep on their bed of twigs. For a while Goldmund leaned against a pine-trunk, very quiet, not to trouble his fellow's sleep. Then, since he froze, he paced the wood. The circle of his steps grew ever wider; he looked up at the pointed tips of pines, like spears, thrust at the leaden sky, his heart a little sad and afraid of the deep, still, freezing night around him, as though his own warm, living heart beat solitary, in a world of never-answering silence. Then he stole back, to listen to his sleeping comrade's breath. Deeper than ever before, did he feel the disquiet of the homeless, who have set no wall of castle, house, or cloister between themselves and the great fear; who go naked through a world of strangers and enemies, alone under icy, mocking stars, with prowling beasts, among the patient, resolute trees.

No, he thought, he would never become like Victor; not if he strayed the roads his whole life long. Never could he manage to assume that vagabond's defence against the fear, his sly, thief's tricks, to hunt up a living; his bold, ranting kind of foolery, the mouthing gallows-humour of Bramarbas. Perhaps this trickster was right, and Goldmund could never be his colleague, never the completed vagrant, and would one day have to creep back to the shelter of walls. But whether or no, he would always know himself a homeless one, nowhere really secure and well-protected: the world would be a riddle to the end; a gruesome, fair, unanswerable riddle, and, to the end, he must listen to its silence, in the midst of which his heart thumped so wildly, and seemed so transitory and frail. A few stars glittered high above him: no wind, though distant clouds seemed to drift.

Victor did not wake for many hours since Goldmund had not ventured to rouse him. At last he shouted:

'Come, you must get some rest, or tomorrow you'll be fit for nothing.'

Goldmund obeyed, lay on the branches, and shut his eyes. He was worn out, yet no sleep came. His thoughts kept him awake, and a new sensation along with them, one that he himself could not explain, as though he were uneasy for his comrade. Nor could he understand how he ever brought himself to speak of Lydia to this ruffian, with his strident laugh, his bawdy and impudent beggary. He was enraged with Victor and with himself, and pondered with a heavy heart on his best means of parting company. Nevertheless he must have dozed, since suddenly he knew, with a start, that Victor's hands were fumbling on his body, straying here and there with quick caution, and thrusting into the pockets of his jerkin. In one lay his knife, in the other the ducat. Victor would steal both if he could find them. He pretended still to be asleep, and as if in the heaviest slumber, shifted his arm. Victor drew back. Goldmund, with fury in his heart, resolved to go from him next day.

But when, perhaps an hour after this, Victor bent over him again, and began to rummage in his pocket, Goldmund grew cold for very rage. He lay quite still, but opened his eyes, and said scornfully:

'Go now! You'll find nothing here to steal.'

The thief, in terror at this, gripped Goldmund's throat between his hands, who struggled, and strove to fling him off. But the other pressed down tighter and tighter, setting his knee against his chest. Then Goldmund, as his breath was extinguished, wriggled and tore with his whole body, made suddenly wary and alert, as he could not manage to break loose, by the instant fear of death that entered his mind. At last he brought his hand round to his pocket, as the grip tightened upon his throat, whipped the little hunting-knife far out, and struck down, quickly and blindly, several times, on the kneeling Victor. An instant later Victor's grip fell loose, and there was air again. Goldmund drew a deep, wild breath of delight, exulting in is rescued life.

Then he strove to scramble up, but the long, thin comrade fell in a heap on him, crumpled, with a rattling groan, his blood streaming down on Goldmund's face. Only then could he thrust him aside and rise. There, in grey light, the long, spare carcass sat hunched up, slippery with blood, when Goldmund clasped it. He raised its head: it dropped again, like a soft, heavy sack. The blood still oozed from his nape and back, while from his mouth, in a wild sigh, that soon diminished, the life ebbed out of him.

'Now I have slain a man,' thought Goldmund, and thought it again and again as he knelt about the dying Victor, watching the pallor stiffen out his face. 'Holy Mother of God, now I have slaughtered.' He could hear his own voice saying the words.

Suddenly to remain became unbearable. He caught up his knife, and wiped it on the woollen shift, still worn by the other, woven by Lydia's hands to keep her love warm; sheathed it in its wooden case, and thrust it away into his pocket: sprang up, and ran off with all his might.

This merry vagrant's death was a heavy grief to him. Shuddering, as the sun arose, he cleaned all the blood from off his body: for a day and night wandered aimlessly. It was hunger at last that spurred him up, and ended his remorse and terror.

Lost in the empty snow-bound country, without shelter, path, or bite to stay his entrails, he grew wild and desperate at last, howling his need like a beast, sinking again and again, worn out; longing only to sleep, and die in the snow. But famine would grant him no peace. He ran madly on, avid to live, quickened and spurred by the bitterest hunger and despair, by soulless strength and wild desire, the sheer, stark force of naked life in him. From juniper-bushes, laden with their snow, he clawed, with stiff blue fingers, the shrivelled berries, chewed up the bitter fruit, strewn with pine-needles, whose sharp taste maddened him, devoured handfuls of snow to still his thirst. Blowing in his frozen hands, he sank down to rest upon a hillock, eagerly spying out the land. Only heath and woodland within sight, nowhere any traces of men. Over him flew two ravens; he eyed them maliciously. No, they should not get him for their supper, not with an ounce of strength still in his legs, a spark of human warmth still in his blood. He stood up, to fight again with mighty death, ran on and on, while in the fevered exhaustion of this last effort, a thousand strangest thoughts possessed his mind, and he cracked wild jests with himself, half in his head and half in words. He shouted to Victor, whom he had stabbed, taunting him in harsh scorn of his death: 'How is it with you, sly brother? Does the moon shine clear through your ribs yet? Are two foxes snuffling round your ears, lad? You told me once you killed a wolf. Did you bite out his throat or tear his tail off? So you wanted my ducat, you old guzzler! But, you see, little Goldmund was your match – eh, Victor, he tickled your ribs finely! And all the time you'd a wallet of cheese and sausage, you swine, you gormandizer.' Such jests as these he proclaimed, howling and panting, mocking the dead, and crowing over him, laughing the fool to scorn, for letting himself be slaughtered like a fool, the poor knave, the silly swaggerer!

Then he thought no more of poor, lean Victor, since Julia seemed to run in front of him, just as she had left him that night. To her he cried out little love-words, tempting her with lewd, jocund cries, asking her body; let her come to him, strip off her shirt, and they'd go to heaven together, for one hour only before they died, an instant only before they sank and rotted. Begging her, enticing her on, he told of her little jutting breasts, her legs, and the rough, gold hair under her armpits. And again, as he stumbled on his way, in the snowy tuft-grass of the moorland, with stiff legs, and drunk with pain, triumphant with the flickering greed for life, he began to whisper to another. This time it was Narziss he talked with, telling him new thoughts, new jests, new wisdom.

'Do you fear, Narziss,' he asked him, 'has your blood run cold? have you not seen it? Yes, my friend, the world is full of death, he sits on every hedge, and stands in wait round every tree-trunk, so there's no help to be got by building stone walls and dormitories, and churches, and chapels of ease. He'll spy you out through any window; he can smile, he knows each of you so well, and at midnight you can hear him chuckle, calling your name outside the house. Sing your psalms and light up your tapers on your altars, hurry to your matins and vespers, gather your herbs in the stillroom, pile your books together in your libraries. Do you fast, amice? Do your watch? None of it will do you good: friend Bones will take it all away from you, strip off the flesh, and leave you rattling. Run, Narziss, make haste. There's junketing out in the fields: run – only keep your bones together, man, they'll fall apart unless you look to them. Bones won't stay tight for any man! Alas for our poor bones! Alas for our poor soft gullet and belly, alas for our poor bit of brain under the skull. All that melts away like the snow. It all runs off to the devil, while crows, like black priests, croak on their branches.'

For long the wanderer could not tell what place he was in, or where he went – if he spoke, if he ran on, or lay on his face. He tripped on tufts, ran against trees, clutched, as he fell, at brambles, thick with snow. Yet the will to run from death was strongest in him, ever hunting him up, and urging him forward, chasing the blind runner over his ground!

When at last he fell in a long swoon this happened in the very same village where, some days back, he had met the wandering scholar, and held his rush-light over a groaning birth. Then he lay still; the folk came out and stood around him gossiping, but he could not hear them any more. The woman he had pleased with his love knew his face again, and shuddered to see it, took pity on him, let her husband scold, and lugged his half-dead body into her cow-stall.

It was not so long before Goldmund was on his feet, and ready to take the roads afresh. His long sleep, the warmth of the stable, the goat's milk given him by the woman, had soon brought back the strength to his body. And all the rest was half-forgotten, his trudging at Victor's side, the sad, frozen night under the pines, his fellow's fearful end, his days in the wilderness. But though it had half-faded, something was left of it. Some fear he could never name refused to leave him, although he put it from him into the past: a terror, and yet a precious thing, sunk deep in him but still a part of his mind, an aftertaste, a lingering thought, an iron ring about his heart. In scarce two years he had learned all there was to learn of vagrants' lives: solitude, freedom, the instinct to spy on beasts and trees, fleeting love, without any faith in it, need, bitter as death. For days he had been the guest of summer fields, for days and months the guest of forests; days in the snow, and days with the fear of death on him.

And in all the keenest, strongest feeling had been that he must fight of death; that, small and miserable as he knew himself, he yet, in this last desperate encounter, had felt the glorious, terrible hold of life in him. The echoes of this battle still rang through him, his heart was graven with it indelibly; as deep a knowledge as that other, of the gesture and expression of desire, so like to those of the dying, and bearing mothers.

How short a time since that mother had lain, groaning and puckering; how short a time since Victor had crumpled together with a groan; how softly, quickly, his blood had dripped!

Oh, and he too, how those days of hunger had taught him to keep guard against death; how they had torn at his entrails, freezing him almost to ice! And how he had struggled against it all, striking death full in the face; with what mortal fear, what grim exultation, he had guarded himself! There was not much more to be learnt in the world, he felt. He might perhaps talk of it to Narziss. Nobody else would understand.

When Goldmund, on his straw bed in the cow-stall, came to his senses again for the first time, he missed the ducat from his pocket. Had he lost it in that terrible half-swoon? He pondered the matter long. He loved his ducat, and would not willingly have lost it. Money might mean very little, since he scarcely knew how to value it, but this gold-piece had grown dear to him for two reasons. It was the only gift of Lydia that remained, since her woollen shift, on Victor's body, lay in the forest, stiff with blood. Then, above all, it had been this piece of gold he would not relinquish; for its sake he had struggled with Victor, and killed him for it. If now his ducat should be lost his cruel deed, in a sense, would have lost its meaning. After long cogitation he decided to speak his mind to the peasant-woman.

'Christine,' he whispered, 'I had a gold ducat in my pouch, and it isn't there any more.'

'Oh, then you've noticed,' she said, with an odd, tender smile, yet sly, which pleased him so that, weak as he was, he slipped an arm about her waist.

'You're a funny lad,' she said gently, 'so fine and clever, yet so simple. Does any but a fool wander the roads with a gold ducat loose in his pouch? I found your ducat in your jerkin, as soon as I laid you in the straw.'

'Did you? And where is it now, then?'

'Seek it,' she laughed; and did indeed let him search a long while, before she showed him the place in his jerkin into which she had sown his piece of gold. To this she added a whole string of good, sage, motherly counsel, which he forgot as soon as she gave it, though he never would forget her lover's service, or the sly, kind look in her peasant's eyes.

He strove to show her that he was grateful, and when, in a short while, he could take the roads again and was eager to get up and go his ways, she held him back, saying that soon the moon would change, and then the weather must certainly be warmer. So it was. When Goldmund went his ways, the snow lay, sick and grey, on the roads; the air was heavy and damp, and spring winds moaned in the sky.