The Sword Maker | Page 7

Herr Goebel, you are at fault. I know an expedition of folly
was promoted at enormous expense, and that the empty barges,
numbering something like fivescore, now rest in the deepest part of the
Rhine."

"Why do you call it an expedition of folly?"
"Surely the result shows it to be such."
"A plan may meet with disaster, even where every precaution has been
taken. We did the best we could, and if the men we had paid for the
protection of the flotilla had not, with base cowardice, deserted their
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