The Sword Maker | Page 7

posts, these barges would have reached Cologne."
"Never! The defenders you chose were riff-raff, picked up in the gutters of Frankfort, and you actually supposed such cattle, undisciplined and untrained, would stand up against the fearless fighters of the Barons, swashbucklers, hardened to the use of sword and pike. What else was to be expected? The goods were not theirs, but yours. They had received their pay, and so speedily took themselves out of danger."
"You forget, sir, or you do not know, that several hundred of them were cut to pieces."
"I know that, also, but the knowledge does not in the least nullify my contention. I am merely endeavoring to show you that the heads you spoke of a moment ago were only older, but not necessarily wiser than mine. It would be impossible for me to devise an expedition so preposterous."
"What should we have done?"
"For one thing, you should have gone yourselves, and defended your own bales."
The merchant showed visible signs of a slowly rising anger, and had the young man's head contained the wisdom he appeared to claim for it, he would have known that his remarks were entirely lacking in tact, and that he was making no progress, but rather the reverse. "You speak like a heedless, untutored youth. How could we defend our bales, when no merchant is allowed to wear a sword?"
Roland rose and put his hands to the throat of his cloak.
"I am not allowed to wear a sword;" and saying this, he dramatically flung wide his cloak, displaying the prohibited weapon hanging from his belt. The merchant sat back in his chair, visibly impressed.
"You seem to repose great confidence in me," he said. "What if I were to inform the authorities?"
The youth smiled.
"You forget, Herr Goebel, that I learned much about you from your friend last night. I feel quite safe in your house."
He flung his cloak once more over the weapon, and sat down again.
"What is your occupation, sir?" asked the merchant.
"I am a teacher of swordsmanship. I practice the art of a fencing-master."
"Your clients are aristocrats, then?"
"Not so. The class with which I am now engaged contains twenty skilled artisans of about my own age."
"If they do not belong to the aristocracy, your instruction must be surreptitious, because it is against the law."
"It is both surreptitious and against the law, but in spite of these disadvantages, my twenty pupils are the best swordsmen in Frankfort, and I would willingly pit them against any twenty nobles with whom I am acquainted."
"So!" cried the merchant. "You are acquainted with twenty nobles, are you?"
"Well, you see," explained the young man, flushing slightly, "these metal-workers whom I drill, being out of employment, cannot afford to pay for their lessons, and naturally, as you indicated, a fencing-master must look to the nobles for his bread. I used the word acquaintance hastily. I am acquainted with the nobles in the same way that a clerk in the woolen trade might say he was acquainted with a score of merchants, to none of whom he had ever spoken."
"I see. Am I to take it that your project for opening the Rhine depends for its success on those twenty metal-workers, who quite lawlessly know how to handle their swords?"
"Yes."
"Tell me what your plan is."
"I do not care to disclose my plan, even to you."
"I thought you came here hoping I should further your project, and perhaps finance it. Am I wrong in such a surmise?"
"Sir, you are not. The very first proviso is that you pay to me across this table a thousand thalers in gold."
The smile came again to the lips of the merchant.
"Anything else?" he asked.
"Yes. You will select one of your largest barges, and fill it with whatever class of goods you deal in."
"Don't you know what class of goods I deal in?"
"No! I do not."
Goebel's smile broadened. That a youth so ignorant of everything pertaining to the commerce of Frankfort, should come in thus boldly and demand a thousand thalers in gold from a man whose occupation he did not know, seemed to the merchant one of the greatest pieces of impudence he had encountered in his long experience of men.
"After all, my merchandise," he said, "matters little one way or another when I am engaged with such a customer as you. What next?"
"You will next place a price upon the shipload; a price such as you would accept if the boat reached Cologne intact. I agree to pay you that money, together with the thousand thalers, when I return to Frankfort."
"And when will that be, young sir?"
"You are better able to estimate the length of time than I. I do not know, for instance, how long it takes a barge to voyage from Frankfort to Cologne."
"Given fair weather, which we may expect in July, and