CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ON the first days of these new wanderings, the first greedy tumult of new-won freedom, Goldmund had to learn all over again how to live the homeless, timeless life of the roads. The homeless live the lives of valiant children, obeying none, their only lord the changing sky, with no aim before them, and no roof over them, owning nothing, ready for any hazard – their beggarly and stalwart lives. They are Adam's sons, who was turned forth, and brothers of the innocent beasts. From the hand of God, from hour to hour, they take whatever He may send them, sun, rain, mist, snow, heat or cold, famine or bellyful, and never notice how time goes, or consider the future, or man's history. For them there is no striving to be great; they have no knowledge of that strange idol called wellbeing, to which the owners cling so fervently. A vagrant may be savage or gentle, skilled in his life or slow to cope with it, valiant or cowardly, he is a child. He lives forever in the Garden before the coming of wars and cities, he steps guided on forever by a few simple needs and longings. Cunning or slow of mind; feeling in the depth of his heart how brittle and fugitive is all life, how meagerly and fearfully living things carry their spark of warmth through the icy universe; or else a poor gluttonous simpleton going in the wake of his gnawing belly – either of these is the deep implacable enemy and deadly rival of safe citizens. They dread him as they dread to be reminded of the running away of all that is, the eternal death, which lives in the air and eats up all men.

Summer and autumn died. Goldmund fought his way through snow again, wandered, full of joy in the sweet-smelling spring, saw seasons tread each other down, the swift sinking to earth of golden summer. So he went on year by year, till at last it seemed he had forgotten all earthly things save thirst, hunger and love, and the quiet, uncanny slipping away of the years. He seemed to have sunk back utterly into the mother, lost in her world of hunger and appeasement, although in every dream or brooding rest, with a view out over flowering or withering valleys, his eyes were open and he a craftsman again, longing to shape this clear and hurrying life, exorcise and inform it with his spirit.

Since Victor's death he had always wandered alone. Yet now, one day, he found he had a companion, who seemed by degrees to have attached himself, without his ever having noticed it, and for some long time he could not get rid of him. But this new vagrant was no Victor; he was a Roman pilgrim and still young, who bore his pilgrim's gown and wide hat, whose name was Robert, and his home by the Lake of Constance. This pilgrim, an artisan's son, had been for a time to school with the monks of St Gallus, and, already as a little boy, had his head crammed full of dreams of a Roman pilgrimage, till at last he had no other thought, and seized his first chance to make it reality. His father's death, in whose shop he had had to work as a joiner, had brought him the liberty he craved. Scarcely was the old man safely buried than Robert announced to mother and sister than nothing now should hold him back, but he would go to Rome for his soul's sake, to pray there for his father's many sins and do penance for them. In vain the women wept and scolded, he set out for Rome, as obstinate as ever, without any blessing from his mother, amid a hail of shrewish chidings from his sister. It was more his longing to wander than any piety in him, though alone with this went a kind of shallow devotion, a love of idling in the neighbourhood of priestly shows and cathedrals. His pleasure was to listen to long offices, watch baptisms, burials, masses for the dead, sniff up incense, warm himself at the gleam of candles. He had managed to pick up a little Latin, though not enough to make himself a scholar, but to still the childish fancies of his soul in long, pious, hovering daydreams at side-altars, in the shadow of naves. Goldmund did not mark him very closely, although he liked him well enough, and felt in some small measure akin to him in his urge to wander and see now lands. So that Robert had broken loose and even managed to get as far as Rome, lodged in his time in numerous cloisters and priests' houses, seen the mountains, and the southern land beyond, and felt very happy indeed among the Roman churches and the pious foundations of the city. There he had heard a hundred masses, knelt and dreamed at all the most famous holy shrines, received the sacraments, and breathed more incense than he needed to fumigate every sin of his youth, or indeed those of his father's whole life.

He had been away a year or longer, but when at last he came back to his father's house they did not welcome him as a prodigal, since he found that his sister in his absence had made herself mistress of the household, with all the rights and duties that should have been his. She had married an industrious journeyman-carpenter, and ruled with such a rod of iron that Robert, after a short stay among them, knew himself one too many in his home, and nobody pressed him to remain when he talked of fresh journeys and pilgrimage. This did not trouble him overmuch. He begged a few spare groats from his mother, donned his pilgrim's hat and gown afresh, and set out on another holy journey. This time he had no aim, but wandered here and there across the Empire, half-friar, half-vagrant, with copper medals jingling round his neck, from every famous place of pilgrimage, and indulgenced rosaries along with them.

In such guise as this he met Goldmund, trudged at his side for a day, and exchanged many vagabonds' tales with him, vanished in the next little market-town, fell in with him again here and there, and in the end remained with him for good, as a willing, dependable companion. Goldmund pleased him very well, he admired his daring, wit, and knowledge, loving him for his strength, health, and sincerity. He strove to win his favour with small services; they became good friends, since Goldmund was a very easy companion. One thing only he would not tolerate. When his brooding, thinking fit was on him, he would trudge along in stubborn silence, looking past Robert as though he were invisible; and then there must be no questions and no chattering, no gossiping attempts to comfort, he must be left alone within his mood. This Robert discovered for himself. Ever since he had known that Goldmund knew strings of Latin verses and songs; since one day, at the door of a cathedral, he had heard him explain the structure of the stone images, and watched him once, as he stood and rested by a wall, daub life-size figures in a few quick strokes on it in raddle, he had begun to consider his comrade one of God's chosen, and indeed almost a magician. That women also favoured Goldmund, so much that, with a look or smile he could make them grant him his desire, pleased Robert less, and yet he had to admire it.

Their journey together was interrupted in a way which neither had foreseen. One day they came to the outskirts of a village: with cudgels, flails, and poles in their hands a handful of peasants awaited them, and, from far off, their leader shouted at them to get back, be gone to the devil, and never show their faces there again. Goldmund went on unheeding, curious to see what the matter was, and soon a stone came crashing into his chest. Robert, for whom he looked about him, had scurried away, as though from fiends. The peasants edged nearer, shouting threats, so that nothing was left him but to follow, though not so hastily. Robert awaited him, trembling, under a rood, with the hanging image of Christ, planted in the middle of a field.

'You ran like a hero,' laughed Goldmund. 'But what have those clods got into their thick heads? Is there a war? - are armed watchmen set before their hovels, and none permitted along the road? I marvel what lies behind all this.'

Neither could tell. Nor until the following morning when certain adventures awaited them in the yard of an isolated farm, did the secret, piece by piece, reveal itself. The farm, set in the midst of a green orchard, with high grass and many fruit-trees, and composed of hut, stall, and barn, lay oddly quiet, as if asleep. In the orchard stood a cow, and lowed in the grass: it was easy enough to see it was time to milk her. They went to the house-door, knocked, and, getting no answer, to the cow-stall, which stood there gaping and empty, and so to the barn, on whose thatched roof the light green moss glistened in the early morning sunshine. There, too, they could find no living soul.

They turned back to the house, baffled and glum at the emptiness of this homestead, beat again on the house-door with both fists, and still no answer came from within. Goldmund pressed against it to open, found, to his surprise, the door unlocked, thrust it back, and entered the low, dark room.

'God greet you,' he called aloud, 'is no-one at home?'

But there was silence.

Robert lingered on outside. Goldmund went in, eager to see. It smelt very bad within the hut, a curious sickening stench. The hearth was piled with ashes, and he blew in them, since a few embers clung to the grey logs. Then, in the twilight of the chimney-corner, he looked up and noticed a seated shape. On a settle somebody sat asleep, and, through the gloom, he saw an old woman. To call was useless, since the house lay as if bewitched, so he nudged the sitter gently and laid his hand upon her shoulder. She did not stir even now, and he noticed that she sat in the midst of a spider's web, its threads spun partly from her hair and partly clinging to her knees. He shivered a little and thought 'She's dead.' To make quite certain of this he worked hard to build up a blaze, raking and puffing until he had a flame, and could set a light to a long stick from it. This torch he held above the sitter's face. Under white hair he saw the grey-blue features of a corpse, one eye still open, glazed as though with lead. She had died there sitting in her chimney-corner. Well, there was nothing to be done for her.

Goldmund, with his flaring torch, stumbled here and there about the place. In the doorway to the room beyond he found another corpse stretched out. A boy of perhaps nine or ten, puckered and bloated, dead in his shift. He lay on his belly across the threshold, his two hands clenched into angry fists. 'This is the second,' Goldmund thought, and went on, as through an ugly dream, into a back room, where the shutters were pulled wide, so that the sunny day shone bright on everything. Carefully he extinguished his light, treading out the sparks on the floor.

This back room had three beds; one empty, with ends of straw jutting out under the coarse grey linen sheet. On the second another body; a bearded man stiff on his back, his head thrust up, his chin and beard stuck out. This must be the master of the house. His sunken face glistened dully, with the opalescent hues of death on it, one of his arms hung down to the earthen floor, where an empty pitcher lay on its side, with the long damp trickle not sucked up yet, and some of it run into a little hollow in which a puddle was still standing. In the second bed, buried and muffled in sheets and coverlet, a broad strong woman lay hunched up, her face pressed down into the bedding, her coarse straw-blonde hair glittering in the strong sunlight. Beside her, as though sucked down along with her, caught and stifled in tumbled linen swathes, lay a half-grown maid, straw-blonde, with grey-blue splotches on her dead face.

Goldmund examined all these faces. In the little maid's, though already it was puffed and swollen, there was a look of helpless shrinking away from death. This mother's nape and hair, who had burrowed so deeply and wildly, had a kind of rage and terror, of passionate flight, in them. This tousled hair would not be reconciled with death. The man's face was defiant, and set in pain: he seemed to have perished there by inches; his beard was thrust sharp into the air; a warrior, stretched upon the field. His rigid defiant sullenness was beautiful. It could have been no ordinary weakling who met his death there. Most moving of all was the corpse of the little boy, lying on his belly over the threshold – a restless grief, a hopeless shielding of himself against unimaginable pain. Close to his head a cat's hole had been let into the lintel.

Goldmund examined every detail. No doubt this hut was very terrible, filled with the savage stench of death. Yet, in spite of all, its attraction was powerful enough. It was real and true, so full of magnificence and fate that something in its terror won his love, forcing a way into his soul.

In the meantime Robert outside was calling querulously. Goldmund was fond enough of Robert, yet this voice brought a thought into his mind: how mean and foolish are the living, with their never-ending terrors and curiosities, the puny effort of their lives, when faced with the quiet, kingly dead. He would not answer at once but gave himself up to the spectacle of these bodies, with that strange admixture of deep pity and cold observation that artists use, taking a close look at their stiffened shapes: then back to the sitter in the chimney-corner to scrutinize her head, her eyes, her hands, the posture in which she had frozen up. How still was this enchanted hut. How strange and terrible this death stench. How remote and ghostly this small habitation of living men, possessed by these – though a few pale sparks still clung to the logs – how penetrated and soaked in quiet decay! Soon this flesh would drop off the rigid faces, rats would scurry out and gnaw the fingers. What others did in the decency of coffins, laid up in wood, safe in the earth, covered away for the last, most wretched of all processes, these five must accomplish above ground, dropping away and rotting in their dwelling-place by garish light, with clapping doors around them, untroubled, shameless, unprotected.

Goldmund had seen many dead, yet never in his life met such an image of the unwithstood, eternal work of death. He let it all sink into his mind.

Robert at last broke up these thoughts with his cries. He went outside, his comrade questioned him fearfully.

'What is it?' he asked in a low voice. 'Is anyone there? Oh, what a face you have – well, say something.'

Goldmund eyed him coldly.

'Go in and see for yourself. It's a queer-looking house in there. Then we can mild the peasant's pretty cow. In with you.'

Robert obeyed uncertainly, groped his way through the twilight to the chimney-corner, found the old woman beside her hearth, saw she was dead, and let out a yell fit to wake her. He ran back with staring eyes.

'For God's sake, Goldmund! There's a dead old woman sitting by the hearth-stone. What is it? Why is nobody with her? Why can't they bury her? Oh God, what a stink there is!'

Goldmund smiled.

'You're a hero, Robert! But what made you come out again so fast. A dead old woman sitting in her chair is a sight worth noting, for any man. And if you go a few steps further you'll see something better still beyond. There are five of them in there, Robert. Three in their beds, and a dead boy in the doorway, besides old granny. The whole family lies there stinking, and the house itself is well-nigh starting to rot. So this was why we found an unmilked cow.'

There was only fear in Robert's eyes, suddenly he cried in a shrill voice:

'Oh – I see now what those peasants were after yesterday when they came to chase us from their village. God! – now I see it all – it's the plague! By my poor wretched soul, the plague! Goldmund! And you've been in there all this while, fingering corpses like as not. Get away from me. Don't come so near. You're poisoned for sure! I'm sorry, Goldmund, but I must leave you. I can't go along with you now.'

Before he could manage to run a yard Goldmund had hold of his pilgrim's gown, and held him, wriggle as he might.

'Young sir,' he said, mocking him gently, 'you're a cleverer fellow than I took you for, and most likely what you say is the truth of it. Well, we shall find that out in time, in the next farm or village. It's likely there's the plague in these parts, we shall know if we escape it and come off again. But to let you run like that, young Robert – oh, no! I'm a soft-hearted man. I couldn't bear to think of you stricken with the fever, as most likely you are, having been in that room with it, and scuttling off by yourself, to lie down somewhere in the fields, and die alone, with no man near you to close your eyes, and none to make you a grave or throw the earth on you – oh no, my friend, that thought's too sad! So mark me, and mark me well, for what I say I won't say twice: we two run the same risk, it may bite either you or me. So we'll stay together and perish together, or else come through this cursed pest-land. Should you sicken and die I am here to bury you, and I promise it. If I die, do as you will, bury me or run off and leave me, all's one. But till that time, dear Robert, you don't escape me. Remember that! We shall need each other. Now hold your noise, I want to hear nothing! And off to that stall to find a milk-pail, so then we can milk the cow at last.'

So it was done, and from that instant it was Goldmund who commanded, Robert obeyed, and for both this made things go easier. Robert did not try to escape again. He answered in a soft meek voice:

'You scared me for a minute, Goldmund. You looked so queer, as you came out of that room with all those corpses, and I thought you must be smitten with the plague. Even if you're not, your face is different! Was it so bad – what you saw in there?'

'No, not so bad,' Goldmund hesitated, 'I saw nothing in there but what lies in store for you and me, and every other man and woman on earth, even with no plague to bite us.'

They went further and soon, on every side, had black death round them, that ruled the land. Many villages refused all access, in others they could wander in every street. Farms stood empty, many rotting dead lay out in the fields, or dropped to pieces in their rooms. Cows, unmilked or famished, lowed in the stalls, and cattle ran wild over the country. They milked and foddered many goats, slaughtered and roasted at the wood's edge many a kid and many a sucking pig, drank the wine and cider in many cellars without hindrance from the master. They had a good life, yet could only half-taste of all these riches. Robert was in perpetual fear of the plague, his belly heaved to see a corpse; often he was almost mad for fright, again and again declared himself struck down, stood long with his head and arms in the smoke of camp fires (it passed for wholesome) and, even asleep, would feel himself all over to make certain that arms and legs and armpits had no boils. Goldmund sometimes chid, and often mocked him. He did not share Robert's terrors, his sick mistrust of a corpse. With sad abstraction filling all his mind he plodded through this land of death, fearfully drawn by the sight of the great slaughter, his soul full of a vast autumn, his heart attuned with the song of the mowing scythe. Often he could see his mother again, a giantess with the livid face of Medusa, smiling her heavy smile of death and grief.

One day they came to a little town. The place was heavily fortified. From its gates, on a level with the housetops, wide ramparts spanned the town's whole girth; and yet no watchman stood above, and none under the open arch of the gateway. Robert feared to enter this walled town, and begged the other not to venture. Meanwhile came the sound of a death-bell, a priest with a crucifix held aloft, and behind him three loaded wagons, two pulled by horses, one by oxen, each piled high with its dead. A couple of churls in strange cloaks, their faces buried in pointed cowls, ran at the side, to prick the beasts.

Robert's knees were shaking under him, his face was the colour of whey. Goldmund followed after the death-carts, keeping a little distance in their wake. But not to a graveyard. Out on the empty heath gaped a hole, only deep a couple of hands, yet wide as the throne-room in a palace. Goldmund stood and watched the churls tear down the dead from their carts with long hooked poles, and heap them into the earth, as the priest muttered and waved his crucifix, went off again, and left them there, to build great fires around the graves, and run back in silence into their city. He went to the edge and looked down. Fifty or more must be huddled there, one over the other, many naked. Here and there a stiff reproachful arm or leg, the edge of a shift fluttering in the wind.

When he came back Robert went on his knees to him, begging him to hurry away from the place. He had good reason for such petition, since the absent look in Goldmund's eyes, that deep stare, grown all too familiar, revealed to him only his fellow's longing to see more and more of death. He could not prevail over Goldmund, yet would not follow, and let him go alone through the gates.

As he passed under this unwatched gateway, and heard his feet ring out again on cobbles, Goldmund remembered many little towns into which he had loitered off the high-road. How noisy they had been, with children's voices, with boys shouting at their games, women squabbling, smiths hammering music out of anvils and many such delicate, lusty sounds to welcome him, whose intermingled skein had filled his ears with all the manifold pattern of human work, pleasure, accomplishment, companionship. Here, in this hollow-sounding gateway, these empty streets, there was no noise; it all lay dead and rigid with decay, and the music of a gossiping brook came far too loudly, almost disturbingly. Behind one grating he saw a baker, in the midst of his quartern loaves and small-bread. Goldmund pointed to a loaf, and the baker thrust it forth very gingerly, laid on the end of a long baking shovel, and waited for Goldmund's money to be set down. With nothing more than an evil look, as the stranger set no money on the shovel, but went on his way munching the loaf, the baker pulled his grating to again.

Along the casement ledge of a fine house stood a row of earthen vases, where flowers had bloomed, and over which hung shrivelled leaves. From another came sobs and the whining cries of a child. But in the next street, high up in her window, Goldmund saw a dainty girl, combing her hair out of a casement. He caught her eye, and she blushed, but did not turn aside from him, and when he smiled, a poor weak smile crept into her face along with her blushes.

'Soon have finished your combing?' he called up to her.

She bent down smiling over her window-ledge.

'Not sick yet?' he asked, and she shook her head. 'Well, come with me, then, leave this death-warren! Let's go into the woods and have a good life there.'

Her eyes began to question his.

'I mean it!' Goldmund insisted, 'but don't take too long to think it over. Have your father and mother, or do you live here with strangers as their serving-wench? Strangers, eh? Then come, sweet, let the old folks finish their dying! We're sound and young, and want a good life while we can get it. Come, little brown-hair – this is my earnest.'

She took his measure, hesitant and surprised. He loitered on down an empty street, then down a second, and came back slowly. There stood the maid, bent over her window-ledge, and rejoiced to think he had not left her. She beckoned him, he went on past her; soon she had come running to his side and, even before the gate, she had caught up with him, a little bundle in her hand, her brown hair bound in a red kerchief.

'What do they call you?' he asked.

'Lene. I'll come long with you. Oh, it's so bad here in the town – all dying. Let's get away – far away!'

Not far from the gates Robert squatted ill-humouredly on the ground. He sprang up at the sight of Goldmund, and stared when he saw a maid beside him. This time it was not easy to calm his fears, he wailed, lamented, and protested. To bring a woman out of that den of sickness, and force poor Robert to keep company with her – it was worse than mad, it was tempting God, he would not go another step beside them; he must leave them now, his patience was at an end.

Goldmund let him curse and wail himself out.

'There,' he said, 'you've sung your song. Now, you'll come along with us, and be thankful you have such a dainty companion. And listen, Robert, I have good news for you. We'll live awhile now in peace and health, and do all we can to shun this pestilence. We'll find some place in the woods, with an empty hut in it, or build one; and there I shall live with Lene as man and wife, and you, my friend, shall keep house along with us. Let's have a little ease and quiet together. Are you willing?'

Oh, yes, Robert agreed with all his heart. If only he were not expected to give Lene his hand or touch her gown.

'No,' said Goldmund, 'that you need not. Indeed, I forbid you very strictly to put so much as a finger on Lene. So be content.'

All three went on together, at first in silence, till at last Lene began to talk. How glad she was to see meadows again, and trees, and the wide sky; it had been so terrible in the plague-town, she could never say how fearful it had been. But then she began to tell them all, easing her mind of all its dread. She had many stories of horrid sights, evil tales, for the little town had been a hell. One of the two leeches had died, the other would only visit the rich; dead lay and stank in many houses, with no man to take them out and bury them; in others the coffin-bearers had stolen, swilled and whored, and often, along with the corpses, they had pulled the living sick out of their beds, and thrown them with the others into their death-carts. She had many such fearful things to relate. Neither interrupted her words. Robert heard it all with shuddering joy, Goldmund silent and indifferent, letting her pour out all her grief. He made no comment. What was a man to say to all that? At last Lene was tired, her torrent of words had spent itself. Goldmund slackened his pace and, in a low voice, struck up a song – a song with many verses and ritounelles, and with every verse his voice grew louder. Lene had begun to smile, and Robert listened, happy and amazed. Never before had he heard Goldmund sing. Why, he could do anything, this Goldmund! He was a sorcerer. Goldmund sang truly and well, though his voice was muted. And already, with the second verse, Lene had begun to join in, and soon she was with him full-throatedly. The sun was setting; away along the skyline, over the heath, lay black woods, with far blue mountains behind them, bluer and bluer, as though their hue came from within. Merry or sad, to the beat of their tread, went Goldmund's song.

'You seem very happy today,' said Robert.

'Of course, I am happy today when I have such a fine love to go with me! Oh, Lene, how glad I am that the death churls left you over for me! Tomorrow we'll find a little hut, and in it we can live a good life and be glad that our flesh and bones still fit so well together. Lene, have you seen, in the woods in autumn, the little brown mushrooms the snails love so – and which you can eat?'

'Oh, yes,' she smiled, 'I've seen them often.'

'They are just as brown as your hair, and it smells every bit as good as they do. Shall we sing another catch, or are you hungry? I've still something good in my wallet.'

Next day they found what they were after. In a birch-wood stood a hut, of rough pine-logs, built by woodcutters or hunters. It was empty, the door could be prised open, and Robert thought it a good hut, and felt the place to be healthy. On their way they had met some goats, straying along the road without their shepherd, and had a fine nannygoat along with them.

'Robert,' said Goldmund, 'you may not be a master-carpenter, but at least you were a joiner in your youth. We want to live and keep our state here, and you must build the dividing wall of our castle, so that then we shall have two good rooms, one for my Lene and me, the other for you and your nannygoat. We haven't much to eat though, so today we shall have to do with goat's milk whether there's much of it or little. Now you must build us a wall, while we two strew the beds for all three of us. And tomorrow I'll go out after victuals.'

They got to work at once. Lene and Goldmund gathered ferns and moss and dry leaves, Robert whetted his knife on a flint to cut branches and build up a wall. But he could not finish it that day, so for the night he went off and slept in the wood.

Goldmund found a sweet mistress in Lene, shy and young and full of love. He took her gently in his arms, and they lay awake many hours, he listening to the beating of her heart when she, long appeased and weary, had fallen asleep. He smelt her brown hair and nestled against it, thinking all the while of that wide shallow grave into which mumming devils had emptied out their cartloads of dead. Our life is fair, fair and soon over all our happiness, fair and quickly withered our youth.

The wall when it was built was a good one, but before that they had all three worked on it. Though Robert itched to show his skill, he bragged for hours of what he might have managed, if only he had had his tools, his planning bench, his iron rule and nails. Since here he had only his two hands and a knife, he contented himself with cutting a dozen birch stems, and setting them in a firm close row, well planted in the soil of the floor. The spaces in between, so he insisted, would have to be filled with plaited birch twigs. That needed time, but the work went happily, and both the others lent him a hand. Meanwhile Lene went picking berries, and saw to foddering the goat, while Goldmund strayed about the wood spying out the lie of the land for food, and bringing his plunder back home with him. Far and wide there were no men, and this pleased Robert very well, since now there was no danger of being tainted, or having an enemy to fight. Its disadvantage lay in this, that they found very little to stay their hunger. There was an empty peasant's holding not far off, and this time one without any dead in it, so that Goldmund urged that they must move there, instead of keeping to their log hut. But Robert shuddered and made such faces that Goldmund went alone to the empty house, and brought back all the gear along with him, though every piece he fetched must be washed and smoked at the fire before Robert would touch it.

Certainly it was not much he found there; two stout posts, a hatchet and a milk pail, a few iron vessels and, one day, he caught two hens escaped in a field. Lene was beloved and happy, and all three laughed, as they made their little home, adding something better every day. Bread they might lack, but found instead another goat, and near them a bit of ploughland with beetroots. Day after day sped by, the wattle wall was standing finished, their beds were softer than before, and a chimney with a hearthstone build in the hut. Not far off was a stream where the water was clear and sweet. They would often sing over their work.

Once, as they drank their milk together, and applauded their householder's life, Lene, in a dreamy voice, said suddenly:

'But how will it be in the winter?'

No-one could answer her. Robert laughed. Goldmund stared uneasily in front of him. Suddenly, Lene grew aware that neither had so much as thought of that. Neither in his heart intended to stay long in this place, and so their home was not a home, and she only a wanderer with vagabonds. She hung her head.

Then Goldmund answered, as one jokes to put new heart into a child:

'You're a real peasant's daughter, Lene, and such have a care for far-off days. Don't be afraid! You can soon find your way back home again, when the plague-time is over and forgotten. Then you can go to your own, or whoever else may be there waiting for you, or back into the town as a serving-wench, and get your bread. But now it's summer still, and here it's pleasant, and life is good. So let's stay here together as short or long a while as pleases us.'

'And after?' cried Lene angrily. 'It will soon be winter. Then you'll jog off alone. And I –?'

Goldmund snatched her plaits and tugged them gently.

'You silly maid,' he said, 'do you forget the grave-churls and the death-carts, and the houses standing empty or full of corpses, or that hole by the gates, with the fires burning? Be glad you're not lying out in a hole, with the rain pattering down onto your shift. That's what you should think. “I've come out of it, and still have sweet life in my limbs, and can sing and laugh still.”'

That did not please her yet.

'But I don't want to be off again,' she whimpered. 'You shan't leave me – no! How can I live happily here, if I know that soon it will all be past and over?'

Once more Goldmund answered her gently, but this time with a hint of threat in his voice.

'My Lene, what you have just been saying has plagued every wise man in the world, and all of them have broken their skulls, thinking of it. But if what we have now is not to your liking, or good enough for such as you, I'll fire the hut this very minute, and let us all go our ways. Be content, Lene, I speak my mind.'

She said no more, but a shadow lay across their love.