Remembrance

The light from the candles struggled to hold back the darkness of midnight. In the fireplace, the dying embers of a fire lit earlier in the evening called out for attention. It was early spring, so while the fire wasn’t a necessity, a little heat would not be a bad thing. The candles were a different matter. ‘I must come up with something better than wax and wicks’, thought Worner Hesenborg. He sat working at his desk, a cup of kahveh in hand. Kahveh was strong at turning back sleep. A cup late in the evening fought off sleep very well, unlike the candles that struggled against the darkness.

Hesenborg got up and ambled over to the fire place. He placed another pine log on the fire, and, with a little encouragement from a poker, the fire quickly came alive, throwing some heat and light into the room. A finger to the side of the kahveh pot revealed that it needed to be warmed up. Very well, the fire would accomplish this in awhile. He glanced at the candles. They were wearing out. ‘Damn’, he thought. ‘There has to be something that will provide better light for extended periods of time. Not being able to work efficiently late at night has become too annoying.’ Grudgingly, he lit another candle and tended to the others.

The room, Hesenborg’s study, was where he spent his time when he wasn’t in the work shop. Hesenborg slept about five hours a day, and was always up with the first light. One couldn’t waste the natural light of the sun. With the arrival of spring, the days were getting longer, and more light was available. More light to work by. Still, being hindered by darkness was something to consider. He needed to devote some time to it. Magical light wouldn’t work. He knew of no mage who practiced light magic in the Ferry. Well, he knew of no mage that didn’t swear fealty to the Crown. A Crown mage wouldn’t help him in that task. Crown mages looked down upon people of the frontier, and mages in general looked down on alchemists. Unless, of course, they needed some kind of potion. No, a new means of artificial light was something Hesenborg would have to do on his own. No problem; this was a condition he was used to.

When Hesenborg had been young, he had wanted to study alchemy in one of the northern cities. His father, Rutger, had said no. Rutger wanted him to stay home and manage the family farming operations. While Worner shared his father’s concern for gold, he didn’t share a love of farming. The only thing they agreed on was getting up early for work. Besides, Worner’s older brother Ralf was a much better farmer, and would have the controlling interest in the farm after their father died anyway. Manual labor? Bah! Too hard.

No, Worner had been a book worm. ‘Always reading something’, his father used to complain. Until, the day Worner was reading some agricultural texts and came upon some useful ideas. ‘Switching crops from one field to another makes some sense’, argued Worner. ‘One can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again. Things wear out. You wouldn’t use the same mill wheel over and over without lubricating it and replacing the worn parts.’

‘What do you know of farming?’ muttered his father.

His brother Ralf, who had a better view of book learning, said, ‘Oh, give him that old pasture down by the apple tree. We haven’t had much luck growing anything down that way. It can’t hurt.’

Rutger thought for a moment. ‘Oh, go ahead. If you are wrong, you’ll work on the farm for two years. I’ve been thinking of building a mill down by the stream, and you would be perfect for it. But you can’t sell the land. And don’t involve your little brother Max. I don’t want him getting any foolish ideas from you. However, if you’re right, which you won’t be, the profits are yours and Ralf’s.’

The results had been outstanding. Wheat had always been grown there. So the boys planted oats that spring. Worner harvested the oats himself. His father remarked on his hard work, praising him for his industriousness. ‘See, you can be a decent farmer. All you have to do is get your nose out of a book’. His father was amazed when the oats sold for 100 silver pennies. In the summer, he let clover overrun the place. However, Worner let old man Schmidt graze his sheep there. Another 100 silver were picked up in the rent. When late fall came, Worner sowed rye, with the same successful results. He did this for another year, until he had accumulated a horde of silver that would have made the old money lender Fugger take notice. After the second rye harvest, Worner, Ralf, Max, and their father sat down to talk.

‘I have to admit, you were right, Worner’, said Rutger. Rutger had mixed feelings on the situation. On the one had he had lost his bet, and he did not take losing kindly. On the other hand, the farm was making more money than it had before, and life was pretty good for the Hesenborgs. ‘The apple field has become really productive. I thought it would take cart loads of animal manure or some dirt-eating mage to make that ground by the apple tree fertile again. You win. You don’t have to go work on building that mill. But I hate to see you go. We could become more profitable if you stayed on and we kept up the improvements.’ Rutger opened the tap on a keg of ale and poured four mugs.

‘Well, we did get manure. Old Schmidty gave us the fertilizer for free when his sheep grazed there. We are starting to apply some of the same principles to the other fields. There has not been much of a supply of fruit around here. We have started raising apple seedlings. In a few years, we’ll have a nice orchard. Besides, Ralf and Max have developed inquisitive minds regarding farming. Their minds for profit are as acute as mine. They’ll be able to do as well as I can, and they’ll actually enjoy it’. Worner lit his pipe and blew a ring of smoke. He passed the lit stick to his father so he could light his own pipe.

‘Well, what do you think, Ralf?’ Rutger lit his pipe and started to pass the mugs of ale around.

‘I’ve been doing some thinking lately. I think I can increase our tabacc output, and at the same time improve the quality. There should be a market for this in the Frontier. Most of the tabacc down here has to be imported from as far as Bardstown. We could meet a need here. And I want to try brewing some different ale this winter. I’ve got a recipe for rye ale that has proved very tasty. Old man Riesen down at the Dancing Pig said it was some of the best ale he’d ever had, and that old drunk is an authority on good ale. He said that he’d buy as much of the stuff as I could make.’ Ralf took a swig of the ale his father got down. ‘Better than this rot-gut’. All of the Hesenborg men laughed.

‘Very well then. Go to Anglia and learn your trade. Then come back south and help your poor old father out.’ For a moment, Rutger had a pitiful look.

‘Poor nothing. If the Frontier Council knew how much money you had, they would come to you for a loan’, snorted Worner.

Again there was much laughter, and the men drank the night away.

A few months later, Worner had left for Anglia. He went with a caravan headed by a friend of his father’s. ‘He’s a young merchant trying to make his way in the world. Pasha is a bit odd, but has good business instincts’. Pasha thought he could actually sell some of their tabacc once he got across the Brown River. ‘We can undercut the price of the premium stuff from Bardstown in the lands just north of Lord Wallace’. Part of the deal was safe passage for Worner.

After the caravan arrived in Anglia City, Worner went and researched the various teachers of alchemy. He settled on an old man named Cavendish who was quite adept at his trade. Five years later, Cavendish told him there was nothing else he could teach Worner, and offered him a partnership. Worner worked there for several years, and then old Cavendish died. Having no heirs, Cavendish had named Worner executor of his estate. Once bills were paid, and the property sold, Worner had a tidy sum of money and reasonable library.

Worner traveled in the North for awhile. The travels included a stay in Lord Gahanna’s lands. The library had been magnificent. Nothing like it in the known world. He had visited the miners in the northwestern mountains, and learned appreciation for an engineering skill that was matched by none. But eventually, Worner headed back to Brown’s Ferry. All though he would never admit to it, Worner had something of a sentimental streak.

Worner arrived in Yule of 2400. The whole town was glad to see him, but his family especially. His father was old, nearly 70, but still hearty and sound of mind. He kept a middle-aged housekeeper around, Brunhilde. ‘Were that I forty years younger, she’d be with child’, remarked Rutger.

‘Ha!’ said Worner. ‘You keep trying to fire your bow, but you have no arrows left’. The Hesenborg men guffawed at it. The women, as was their wont, tended to act like wet blankets. Ralf had a wife named Helga. They had four children, Hans, Schultz, Gerta, and Nissa. Max had married a woman named Kilda. They had four children of their own, Lisabet and Kurt, and two young twins named Johnna and Jan. All were under the age of 10. The farming, brewing, and tabacc curing had grown prosperous, and the family lived well. Worner lived with them through the winter. The children loved his stories of travel, especially when he told them of the Great Lake of the North and the curious miners of the Northwest. Worner even helped out with some of the brewing, but he spent much time preparing to set up shop.

In the spring Worner set up shop down on Dock Street. When news of the ‘wandering Hesenborg’ had set up shop, many stopped in for a potion or powder. Life was good, and good for a long time. Rutger’s grandchildren started families of their own. The only bad thing had been Nissa dying in child-birth. Things like that happen. Father died in 2416, at the ripe old age of 86. Other than, life had been good. Until the war…

Worner snapped out of his day dream. Hans and Schultz had been killed in battle. Gerta’s husband had died the same day. It was one of the few early battles where the Frontier had been led by an incompetent. In a perverse form of justice, their commander, Captain Belhood, had been killed too. All though Worner tried to console her, Gerta had died of grief soon after.

The worst had been at the Betrayal. Ralf and Max had been there and had been poisoned. All though a rare poison, Worner had seen this one before. It acted on the nerves. Using all of his skill, Worner had concocted an anti-dote that saved Ralf and several others, but Max was too far gone. It had been for naught, as Ralf was later hunted down and killed. Then the old farm had been burned down. There were mementoes lost, heirlooms destroyed. Worst of all, several books had burned. Soldiers. At best, the average soldier did what he was told, and respected most private property. At worst…

The last Worner had heard of Kurt, he had been fighting in the Borderlands as a mercenary. He was probably dead. Jan had died of sickness right after the war. Johnna had married another survivor and lived in Big Cove. He sometimes went to see her. Lisabet still lived in Brown’s Ferry. While she was physically okay, her mind was not always sound. Worner watched after her, made sure she was not doing anything dangerous and that she was provided for. She lived in a small cottage on the opposite side of Brown’s Ferry from the old Hesenborg place. In one of her lucid moments, she had spoken with Worner about this.

‘When I go out there, all the memories of what is gone come back. I just want to hang my head and cry. Everyone is gone, save you and Johnna. Kurt, I can’t even think about. I sometimes wish I had died before the war.’

‘I know child. I wish you did not have to bear the memories of what has past. If it helps to be away from the old place, I will not hold it against you.’

And so none of the Hesenborgs lived out at the old place. Worner still owned the land, holding onto the right time to sell it. Sometimes he went down to the old apple tree, the field where his journey had begun. He let farmers pasture their livestock there, but no constructive farming had gone on since before the war. If he died, then the Brown’s Ferry Council would sell the land off.

Worner snapped back into the present. ‘Daydreams and remembrances’, he muttered. ‘No use mourning over spilt ale’.

He stopped for a moment. ‘Well no use mourning. But the good times are worth remembering.’ He smiled a slight smile. He put away the notes he had been working, and took the kahveh off the fire. Out came a mug of ale and a lit pipe. With feet beside a warm fire, Worner stopped to think about the good old days, and not think about the bad ones.