The Golden Portifor - 15. Chapter 15

Karl’s mouth gaped as he stared at his transformed horse. ‘Is she hurting?’ he asked Jonas, very concerned.

‘No, no’ the elf shrugged. ‘She’s a bit confused though. Can’t you tell?’

‘What?’

‘You can surely feel her thoughts by now. I certainly can, and you know her way better than I do. Go up, touch her face and look deep in her eyes.’

Karl did as he was told, kissed Brunhild’s nose and looked hard in her dark eyes, wider than usual as they were. He felt on his skin the wind she was creating by convulsively flexing her great feathered pinions. He’d been able to sense Brunhild’s emotions for some time, but all of a sudden the strength of their connection surged.

For a moment Karl’s world lurched and then new feelings welled up from his stomach, and they weren’t his own. He seemed to see himself through her eyes, a puzzling little colt who strayed off a lot from the herd and very much needed nuzzling and protecting when he wandered back. He reached out and gave Brunhild a hug in his mind, then felt her reach back at him, soothing him as he soothed her.

‘This is weird,’ he called over to his companions. ‘But it’s wonderful!’

‘Give her a suggestion,’ said Jonas. ‘Y’know, in her head.’

So Karl suggested in their joint thoughts that she fold her wings, and she promptly and neatly did.

‘Now tell her to get Jennet to do the same. Jennet’ll hear her and do it, ‘cos Brunhild’s the queen and through Brunhild you’ll be able to talk to all the other horses.’ Brunhild gave a snort, and Jennet did as she was told.

‘Wow! Can I do that?’ Andreas asked.

‘Nah,’ Jonas said, ‘that’s not your gift.’

‘I have a gift?’

‘You do,’ confirmed the elf, ‘and sooner rather than later you’ll know what it is. But Karlo’s found his. So Ando, hang that sword round your neck by its belt; you never know, we may need it. Now both of you mount up on your horses, we have a ways to go.’

‘We’re going to fly?’ Andreas whooped. ‘Fantastic! What about yer, Jonas?’

‘Ah well, that’s an old trick as far as I’m concerned,’ he said. They stared as wings far taller than he was unfolded behind the elf’s back, dark and grey, shot through with blue highlights; the blue spikes reappeared at the same time on his forehead. He flexed his pinions and shot up, hovering above them. ‘Well? What’re you waiting for?’

***

Karl Wollherz felt not the least fear as he hovered high above the treetops of the strange world in which they now were, though he was only kept in place by the grip of his thighs and legs on Brunhild’s flanks and by his fists tangled in her mane. Brunhild herself was perfectly confident in her wings, now stretched wide as they coasted on an updraft. Andreas on Jennet was likewise unmoved by their situation, a broad grin plastered to his face. Jonas was soaring higher still, and urging them further upward. So the horses’ great wings beat and they climbed so high the wide forest below them looked like moss rather than trees. But it grew no colder as they ascended. The upper breezes that caressed them and stirred Karl’s thick and long blond hair about his face were as warm as a summer’s day.

Jonas banked down and flew between them. He pointed down at the river, now a glinting thread far below, winding through the trees. ‘Look downriver, and see far away where it disappears between hills. You can just see the shining surface of the lake it empties into. We’re not going that way. It’s dangerous and forbidden. It brings you to a sacred place where you won’t want to meet what you’ll find.’

‘Have you been there, Jonas?’ Karl asked.

‘Not ever. But friends of mine have, and they didn’t like it one bit.’

‘What friends are those?’ asked Andreas, in some curiosity.

‘Other ... er ... elves. It’s not just me, y’know.’

‘No,’ Karl said. ‘The lady nun ... Her ... she said you’re a prince among your people, the greatest of them.’

‘Did she now? That’s nice of her. We go way back, so she knows a few things about me, more than most people do in fact. Doesn’t alter the fact that she has no business being in your world. One of the things I’m supposed to fix.’

‘I saw her again,’ Karl added.

‘What!’ the startled elf shouted. ‘You should tell me these things. When? Where?’

‘Not in person. Ando did too. We saw her in a window in the Veronkenkirche, it was definitely a picture of her. Why was she there?’

Jonas frowned. ‘When she was alive, she was an important person. She was a lady of great wealth, learning and power, and also a seer.’

‘A seer?’

‘She had true visions and saw the future. After she died she was made a saint. Fenice was her name.’ Jonas shook his head. ‘Saints always cause trouble,’ he grumbled.

‘So she was a ghost? She seemed solid enough to me.’

‘No, she’s not a ghost, if you mean what I think you mean. I bet when you saw her she seemed alive enough. And if she’d taken your hand you would have found hers warm and solid. But ghost or not, she’s not supposed to be in your world, and it’s up to me to send her back where she belongs, which is down that river to the lake. But one problem at a time is what I always say. Anyway, for now we’re going up the river, in the other direction.’

The two boys peered where Jonas was pointing. ‘There’s a long line of mountains there,’ Andreas observed, ‘and a few of them have snow on the top. Could get chilly if we have to go up to the peaks.’

Jonas gestured dismissively. ‘It’s not up there we’re going, but to the foothills where the river rises from the deep springs which bubble up there. It’s a dangerous place too, in its way, for the stream below us is the River of Life and to those who drink of the springs from which it rises is given life everlasting.’

‘Ah!’ cried Andreas. ‘That’s what the wizard was after.’

‘In one, Ando,’ Jonas nodded approvingly. ‘It’s the source of Life and of all Magic, magic of the deepest and most unpredictable sort. And it’s dangerous not just because of that, but because it has Guardians who are beings beyond any control, which is why they’re shut up in this land.’

Andreas went on. ‘And when the wizard blundered in, one of them trapped him with his magic.’

Jonas stared at the prodigy. ‘Are you sure you don’t know what your gift is, Ando?’

The other boy shrugged. ‘Er ... nope. I mean, yeah I’m sure I don’t. You gonna tell me?’

Jonas shook his head silently. ‘Follow me!’ he called back over his shoulder as he beat his dark wings and headed for the mountains.

***

Brunhild and Jennet descended slowly in great spirals, following Jonas down towards a low ridge of heavily wooded hills. Karl leaned forward to pat his friend’s neck and rub her ears in a way he knew she adored. She gave a soft whinny. He picked up nothing from her mind but serene confidence in the air, as if she were the product of a long lineage of flying horses, that and great delight at the freedom her wings gave her. He put it down to Jonas’s magic.

The horses alighted on the bare, grassy top of one of the hills and cantered to a stop, folding their wings. The boys slid off their mounts and joined Jonas, whose wings had vanished along with his little horns, so once again he looked no more than a darkly beautiful child.

‘We’ll leave Brunhild and Jennet here, so tell them to wait patiently, Karlo. Also tell them to go easy on the grass. They don’t need to eat here. It’s just force of habit, and I have no idea what the grass of this place will do to their tummies.

‘I was wondering why I didn’t feel hungry,’ Andreas remarked. ‘But I did get mouthfuls of the water of that stream, and if it is the River of Life, what will drinking it do to me and Karlo?’

‘You won’t live forever,’ Jonas replied slowly, ‘but it will have an effect on you it’s true. It’s washed you clean inside in more than one way, and you’ll never experience the diseases people get from the way their bodies age and break down. So you’ll live longer and healthier lives than otherwise you would, unless someone sticks a sword in you or something.’

‘You knew that when you brought us here, didn’t you,’ Karl remarked.

Jonas nodded his head. ‘Yes, I did. When I make human friends, which is sometimes allowed me, I give them gifts like this if I can.’

Karl went and hugged him hard and was moved to kiss the elf full on the mouth, and after a moment’s surprise he was kissed back. ‘We love you, Jonas,’ he whispered as they separated. He saw a tear in the eldritch boy’s eye as they did and unmistakably detected an inexplicable sadness in him. From which it seemed that it was given Karl to do more than feel equine thoughts. Not only that but his nose was filled at that moment with a quite delightful scent emanating from the elf he had just embraced, a strange but compelling smell which he couldn’t describe other than to say it comforted him to the depths of his being.

Jonas soon gathered himself and was his usual brisk self. ‘It’s down through here, but go quietly. No talking. I don’t know what we’ll find when we get to the spring.’

They sidled down through the trees on the lower slopes, pausing to listen from time to time. It was eerily quiet, and Karl realised why. The colourful birds who filled the woods with their song elsewhere were entirely absent here. Eventually as they descended into a dell the noise of rushing water began to reach them, and soon they saw the source of it, a foaming white stream that burst out of a small cavern and rushed through and over rocks to disappear down the hill. A rainbow shimmered as sunbeams shot through the spray filling the air in the dell.

‘Remember what I warned you about,’ Jonas quietly said as he held them back. ‘Come no closer to the spring than this.’

‘Is this where the wizard met his end?’ Andreas hissed.

‘I think so, and there I think he still is,’ Jonas replied, pointing to what Karl had at first taken to be a standing stone leaning over the dell. But it was not. It was stone, but had once been a man. Jonas beckoned them away from the spring and up to the monolith. They stared up at the face, frozen into a gaze of absolute horror.

‘So he wanted immortality,’ Jonas sighed. ‘Well, he got it. But not how he wanted it. Caught for ever between worlds, his soul is in a prison from which there can be no escape or release, not even should your world end.’

‘Can he see us?’ Karl breathed.

‘He’s not alive and he’s not dead, so I don’t think so. There’s no passage to the world beyond for him. And I rather fear if some consciousness is left him, it’s to make his torment eternal.’

‘The world beyond?’ Karl said. ‘The lady Fenice said that’s where my mutti and vater and the baby are now, and waiting for me. Is it true?’

‘She’d know better than me, for sure. She wouldn’t lie to you. It’d be a bit beneath her. But that place is nothing to do with me and my folk.’

‘You’ll never die, will you Jonas,’ Andreas observed.

‘Never’s a big word,’ the elf said. ‘Who knows? The world I’ve known since first it began may one day change.’

‘What did this, Jonas?’ Andreas asked, gesturing at the transformed wizard.

‘One of those Guardians I warned you about. Though I don’t know precisely which one, even if it’d be nice to find out. Now, the reason we’re here is to find something I know the old wizard must have had with him. Look around here where he was frozen, in amongst the ferns and the bushes. It might be anything, but I’m hoping it’s a book of some sort. The Guardian wouldn’t have bothered with it, and from what I can see of the man’s preserved remains there was nothing in his hands when he was turned to stone.’

‘No pockets either,’ Andreas chuckled. ‘He’s got no clothes on.’

Jonas rolled his eyes. ‘Remember what I said about crossing between worlds. The less of you there is, the easier it is. I gotta say, you have to admire the man for getting this far. No other mortal ever has ... well, apart from you two now.’

They scavenged the ground around the monolith, but there was nothing to be found other than an abandoned sack of gold coins, spilling over the ground. A relic, Karl concluded, of the man’s first greedy experiment in this magical place. Jonas led them scouting further down the gushing stream. Some hundred yards below the spring it fell into a boiling cauldron of a pool and there on its edge were the footprints of a man.

‘Ah hah!’ cried the elf. ‘He stopped here and wondered whether to drink, but he knew that the spell only works where the spring emerges from underground so he climbed on up and met the fate awaiting him. Now let’s follow the prints back to their source and ... yeah ... that’s where he made the crossing from your world to this. You can tell. One set of standing prints from which the others start and the bushes flattened in a ring by the force of the explosion. Not the quietest way to arrive in such a place. The Guardian would have detected him instantly.’

‘So that’s why we arrived downriver and flew in,’ Andreas stated. ‘So we would have a better chance of approaching this place without detection. You’re clever, Jonas.’

The elf beamed. ‘And all we gotta do now is escape, ‘cos the Guardian’s approaching. And no sign of that wizard’s book. Drat.’

***

The three boys burrowed deep into the underbrush and waited breathlessly to see what it was that might pass. There was a vibration in the ground and the bushes were pushed aside by an invisible force that passed ponderously in front of them, but which took no notice of their presence.

As whatever it was went climbing up the hill, Karl let out the breath that he had not realised he was holding.

‘Reminds me of that time the city provosts did that round up of us street kids,’ Andreas remarked.

‘When we hid under the sacks in that wagon with Wilchin? And he was desperate for a pee but we couldn’t move and ...’

‘Yeah, all over my leg, the little scum.’

‘At least that won’t happen here,’ Karl sniggered.

‘Nice to know you two are taking our danger seriously,’ Jonas remarked tartly, ‘or maybe you think life will be better as two small boulders?’

Andreas snorted. ‘Two cute little boulders, which people will come for miles to admire. And what about you, Jonas? What would it do to you?’

‘Good question,’ mused the elf. ‘I don’t want to find the answer either. And we now have to sneak past that Elemental to get to the horses.’

‘What’s an Elemental anyway?’ Andreas wanted to know. ‘There was nothing to see.’

‘Not to your eyes maybe, but it was the one some people call Envy though it has other names, an ugly beast it is, with a huge and insatiable mouth hanging open and sharp eyes that miss very little. A perfect Guardian for this place.’

‘So is it a demon?’ Karl had to ask.

‘No. You don’t get those here, they tend to hang round your world. An Elemental is not actually evil as such. I mean, a mouse for instance might think an elephant that squashed its nest and its babies was evil, but in truth it had no idea they were there and wouldn’t have cared less if it had. Elementals are forces and qualities that somehow have acquired bodies, and it happens a lot here. People of olden days might call them “gods” I suppose, but they want no worshippers and are utterly indifferent to humankind.’

‘Unless a human pokes around one’s neighbourhood?’

‘Exactly that. They have a terrifying effect on people who blunder into them, which is why they’re kept here.’

‘And who keeps them here, Jonas?’ Andreas was suddenly looking thoughtful. ‘Because someone makes the rules round here, and it isn’t you. And someone set a guard on that spring.’

‘Let’s just say he’s a Someone who isn’t utterly indifferent to humans and who’s made all this, and you and me. Now I don’t think we can find out anything more here, and we have to get you away, so Karl, why don’t you call down Brunhild and Jennet from the hilltop, where I bet they’re grazing, despite everything you told them.’

‘But they’re too far,’ Karl declared.

‘Try.’

‘I can’t feel her in my head.’

Jonas took Karl’s hand and squeezed it hard. He tried again and this time he felt a connection. He urged the horses into the air and he and the other two boys got to their feet.

‘There they are!’ cried Andreas, shading his eyes and pointing to the sky.

‘Run down the stream. They’ll see us. Get them to land in that clearing where the wizard arrived. We’ve not got long!’

Now the three were splashing across the stream and pounding along the bank, because there was no doubt they’d been observed and were being pursued.

The two horses alighted in the clearing, but it was too late. Karl and Andreas turned as a great force crashed through the woods behind them. Andreas slapped Karl’s butt. ‘Get on Brunhild! Now! Up! Up!’

Then, as Karl scrambled up on Brunhild, Andreas turned, a fierce expression on his face. Unthinkingly the boy drew his sword, pointed it ahead of him and advanced fearlessly on the unknown. He saw little but two glowing eyes, intent on their small foe. And now a rush of energy surged down his right arm and his sword blazed with a blue light. Andreas shouted out a cry of defiance in a strange tongue quite unknown to him. His sword glowed white now and intolerably bright. The Elemental paused and drew back, confused. The boy’s indomitable courage and blood were up, blazing as bright as his sword, and he might have been about to actually try the blade on the invisible body of his enemy, but wings buffeted around him and Jonas swooped down from the sky to bear him upward so fast Andreas’s stomach seemed to drop to his toes.

As they hovered far above danger and joined the horses, Karl on Brunhild’s back, Jonas whispered in Andreas’s ear. ‘So now do you know your gift?’

***

‘Not an entire failure,’ Jonas concluded philosophically. The three adventurers had returned to the stream bank, and were sitting in a line dangling their feet in a pool, one or other of them occasionally kicking up spray with his toes. Brunhild and Jennet had taken to the air, and were chasing each other across the tree tops.

‘We’re glad,’ Andreas said, ‘but what is this book you’re looking for?’

‘It’s the old wizard’s journal and spell book. It can’t be left around, because the secret of how to get to this place is within it.’

‘So do you think someone in our world still has it?’

‘Yes, I do. And others in your world are looking for it. Those people know what it can do, and they have to be stopped.’

‘So how do we find it?’

Jonas frowned. ‘The one clue we’ve got is that colonel who we know has trapped your lord Boromeo in his schemes. He’s done it for a purpose, and to complete the purpose he needs that book. He’s looking for it too. So one way to find it is to watch him, and you two are well-placed to do that.’

‘Colonel Dudley’s gone away to Italy for now,’ Karl stated. ‘So we don’t have to worry about him for a while.’

‘But he’s left an agent,’ Andreas contributed, ‘who’s Lord Boromeo’s captain and is watching him.’

‘What about the Lady Fenice?’ Karl asked. ‘She’s good isn’t she? Maybe she’ll help us.’

‘Uh-uh,’ Jonas shook his head. ‘She’s got her own purposes, and can’t be trusted not to hinder mine. The less she knows about what we’re doing, the better.’

‘But she may know who has the book,’ Andreas said.

‘I don’t think so,’ Jonas said. ‘If she did, your lord Boromeo wouldn’t be in any danger.’

‘So why Boromeo?’ Andreas came back. ‘I mean, he may be my lord and all but he’s a pretty ordinary sort of kid, unimpressive you might even say. And I speak as someone who deals with his dirty underwear.’

‘Not quite as ordinary as you might think,’ Jonas said. ‘He has one quality he shares with the mad old Graf who was his grandfather.’

Andreas nodded. ‘His blood. So blood has a part to play in crossing over.’

Jonas punched Andreas lightly on his bicep. ‘You’re good,’ he said approvingly. ‘I’ve not met a human quite like you before, so open and quick. Well, apart from Karl that is. Gives me some hope.’

‘Well, what about his blood?’

‘It’s ... unusual,’ Jonas replied. ‘The family of Tarlenheim has some very great ancestors. Lady Fenice is one of course, but even before her time her own ancestors were keepers of a great treasure, as she was too in her day. It’s not a thing you can possess without it changing you, and generation by generation the Tarlenheims are getting more and more bound to it, even though they don’t know quite how much. The mad old wizard learned a lot about all this, more than any other Tarlenheim ever has, even Fenice. He used his own blood to complete the spell that brought him here to his doom. But not enough of it in the end to give him power over the Guardian.’

‘Ah hah!’ cried Andreas. ‘And those who want to follow in his footsteps need more of his blood to do it, and not a little of it, I’ll bet,’

‘Yes, but not just that. I guess the spell will very likely eat Boromeo’s soul as it consumes his blood. He’ll be given to the Guardian as a sacrifice.’

‘Oh! That’s horrible!’ Karl cried. ‘That’s why we have to stop this.’

‘We do. And now it’s time to take you home.’

Andreas looked at Karl, and grinned. ‘Gotta catch us first!’ Both boys were off across the grass and into the trees, and the woods of Eden were filled with the shouts and laughter of happy children for a long time, so far as time was ever measured in that strange place.

***

Brunhild and Jennet cantered to a halt in the dark close in the fields of the Altstadt from where they had started. Their wings were gone and it was cold. Karl and Andreas slid off their mounts and sprinted for the shed, the two mares trotting behind them.

“F-f-freezing,’ shuddered Andreas as he pulled on his breeches, with more of a struggle than usual, as it seemed to him. ‘No wonder Jonas stayed behind in Fairyland. It’s always summer there. How’re the horses? What’re they saying?’

‘They wonder where their wings have gone. Confused, I suppose. I’ll call them inside.’

The mares trotted into the shed, looked around and snorted in apparent disdain. Jennet rolled on her back in her straw bed and sulked.

‘So you brought your magic back with you, Karlo,’ Andreas pronounced. ‘Now ... oh! The sword you gave me!’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Look!’ Andreas held out the Faërie sword. Its belt was gone and its glorious jewelled and gilded scabbard was now shabby, cracked leather, the stitches burst and the metal chape at the tip missing. The grip had lost its original binding and been wound around with coarse string. Andreas drew it out, and the blade at least was intact, if dulled.

‘Oh ... I’m sorry, Ando.’

‘No matter,’ his friend replied, tightening his jaw. ‘It’ll polish up, and I can fix it. Dunno how sharp it is now though.’ He stabbed disconsolately at one of the shed’s supporting beams. The blade went right through it and out the other side, as if it had been made of butter. Andreas, startled, let it go and it sat there, embedded in eight inches of timber.

‘So ...,’ Karl broke into a grin, ‘looks like I’m not the only one who brought magic back from Fairyland.’

They resumed their position leaning back against Brunhild’s belly. Karl pulled the blanket back over them. ‘I don’t think hardly any time has passed here since Jonas came for us. And y’know, I think that sword is the same one I gave you, but it’s really special magic. It’s changed itself so it’ll look like the sort of blade a poor servant boy would have, not a prince.’

‘I’ll still clean it and patch it though. When I get my blue uniform, I’ll ride out with it at my saddle, just like you do.’

‘Two gentlemen,’ Karl chuckled, then yawned. ‘So tired ...’ Then both boys were fast asleep. Brunhild reared up her neck and looked down on the boys, snuffled around their hair and checked they were alright, then she too lay back and slept.

***

Dawn was breaking over the city as Karl and Andreas came down Domstrasse and turned along Engelngasse. It seemed to them as if they had been away for weeks, not a single night.

‘There you are!’ Margrit called out. ‘Get yourself properly washed. I mean all over. Spending the night in a flea-ridden shack, who knows what you’ve picked up? There, I’m filling this tub with hot water. Put those clothes in the pile for laundry. Look at all the bits of straw! Now you stand in it, young Karl, and Andreas can take this washcloth and soap and scrub you down, then he can take his turn. In between your lower cheeks too. You boys never wash there.’ Suddenly her stream of words dried up, and she stared. ‘Your hair!’ she said. ‘It was never this long yesterday. Karl’s has always been thick, but Andreas! It’s such a rich chestnut and tumbling down your back. You’ve not taken one of my lord Strelsau’s wigs? You’ll have a right seeing to if he catches you!’ She grabbed a fistful of Andreas’s locks and pulled hard.

‘Yeeow!’ the boy yelled.

‘Well I never, it really is your hair. Did you tie it up? Is that why I didn’t notice it?’

‘Dunno mistress, maybe.’

She stared, then shook herself. She went over to a drawer and pulled out two ribbons, knelt behind the pair and tied up each one’s hair into a long queue, stroking and sniffing at it as she did so.

‘Well, I’ve seen the change do some strange things to boys, but never this. You both seem to have put on two inches overnight, never mind the hair’

‘The change, mistress?’ Andreas said.

‘Well, look down, child.’

Andreas did, and saw dark curling strands of hair gathered around a groin which had been bare the night before. Then he looked at Karl’s crotch and saw likewise a light shadow of pale brown over his friend’s penis.

***

Andreas made his way up to their room. No wonder his breeches had felt tight. It seems their stay in Fairyland had consequences. So it had brought on the change, which perhaps was not surprising. Jonas had said that it would put their bodies to rights, and he supposed the River of Life had made good all the years of neglect and starvation his body had endured. He felt down the back of his unbuttoned breeches to his buttocks and the ridged scars from the several savage beatings he had endured at the reformatory were quite gone. He felt around his mouth with his tongue and his teeth seemed different, stronger and larger, also there seemed to be more of them at the back. He pulled his breeches and drawers to his knees and examined his old friend between his legs. It was larger and thicker under the hair which now clustered around its root, while his balls seemed swollen and lower.

He sat on the bed for a moment, then shrugged and looked to see if he could adjust the buttons of his breeches for a more comfortable fit. He put on his red livery coat. Fortunately it had been deliberately made so he could grow into it, and now he had filled out it fit him properly. Next problem, Lord Boromeo. What should he tell him about last night’s adventure, and the true horror of the danger in which he was living?

Margrit had said his lord returned from the palace last night under his brother’s escort, rather late and a little drunk from the big party. Andreas had instructions to get him up by ten nonetheless, as there were more exercises on the Martzfeld that day. He clattered down to the presses in the parlour, and on the way checked for the boy’s riding boots, which were outside the door where they should be.

‘Good morning, young master Wittig,’ Jan Lisku hailed him as he entered the parlour. ‘Just finishing buffing Lord Sergius’s topboots. Then it’s your turn.’ The valet gave him a sharp look. Apparently there had already been a discussion down in the kitchen about the simultaneous metamorphosis of both page boys.

‘You’re growing up fast, my lad,’ Jan concluded, and then relaxed and smiled. ‘And growing up handsome too. You will turn heads. I would guess that you and I will soon be having the lesson on how chins and upper lips are shaved.’

‘It took me aback for sure, Master Jan. I could barely get in my breeches this morning.’

‘What an expensive luxury you are. Hmm. I think we’ll see if your present clothing will fit Karl, who’s still smaller than you, and make a list of new items to acquire from Herr Meisel for you. I know there’s nothing much you can do about the change, but take it easy will you.’

Andreas shot the man a grin. ‘I’ll do what I can, Master Jan. In the meantime, my lord Boromeo needs to be up soon. What do I do about a lord with a wine headache?’