It's raining, but it is alright. I'll take my leather riding hood to cover my head and shoulders. It is small enough not to disturb running but large enough to prevent rain from falling on my face. Tuesday is the only weekday when my first class starts at eleven, and I will not miss the opportunity for a longer countryside running.
I take my favourite route toward south, although the low hilly landscape does not offer its best views on this gray foggy morning. I could run through the Black Forest to the hill area, because the view from the Peak Hill is magnificient and you can even see the Town Tower over the forest. That is, if the rain stops by then.
The road is completely empty. I run forward and listen to the sounds of my movements. The hood makes my clothes and breathing sound much louder, and the sheep on the meadow much softer than usually. I hear the raindrops fall on the hood, and my shoes splash on the dirt. Actually, the roadmakers have done good job, because the road surface is hard unlike in most places, where a rain like this would turn roads into mud and impossible to run.
I come out of the forest and start climbing the first hills. After a while I see a wagon approaching in the distance. It seems to be similar to those which with the caravaners move around, except that I cannot see any colours or decoration. It disappears behind the hill. A few minutes later I am reaching the top of the hill, and the wagon reappears. A lonely man is sitting on the bench, hanging his head sadly in the rain. He is definitely not one of the caravaners, those happy campers. Then he sees me.
"Hey, sir, excuse me!"
I feel a vague familiarity with that voice, but I cannot relate it to anything.
"Is this the way to Lonchester?"
The voice is like someone's who is a talented complainer practicing that skill a lot. Even the corners of his mouth seem to have turned downward permanently. But now I am quite sure I know that voice.
"Yes, it is that way. Less than an hour from here."
Now I am only ten yards away from the wagon. I take off my hood to hear the man's voice more clearly. He is at his fifties at least, intense sun has made his face dark and older than his age. His eyes are sharp and gray, like streaks. And he has a scar on his left cheek.
It's like a thunderbolt from the sky. I suddenly feel my feet turn soft and weak and I stop. This man is dead. A dead man is talking to me.
"An hour still? Damn it. Thanks anyway."
The man starts to turn back to his horse, but he notices the strange looks on my face and hesitates. I am now just beside his wagon.
"Jacobs!?"
My unintentional blurt changes him completely. First his eyes are filled with horror, but less than a second later he raises the whip he had in his right hand to lash the horse. Now he aims at me with desperate force. I barely manage to raise my left forearm, luckily covered with the hood, before the whip cracks painfully. I manage to grab the whip before he pulls it for a new hit, and it slips out of his hand.
His face is now very pale, maybe both because he realises that he lost his weapon and because he now seems to recognise me. I start to collect the whip into my hand to be prepared for whatever comes next. But he is clearly not for fighting, as he hits the horse with the rein and forces it galloping. I try to grab the wagon with my hand, but he throws a bottle that happened to lie in his feet at me. I have to duck and barely miss the handle at the rear end of the wagon.
When I get up, the horse is rushing downhill already twenty yards ahead of me. I have no chance of catching up to it here. If the road wouldn't be so darn good, I could easily catch the heavy wagon in the mud.
I stop to pant. Confusion and anger fill my head. I don't understand anything. Hans Jacobs is dead, and everyone knows that. And yet, here he is, quite alive. And it definitely is him, with the scar and face and eyes and voice and all. He even recognised me.
Oh my gods. I don't know what to think of this, but I must not let him go. Although his horse runs faster than me, the downhill part ends in the forest so that will slow him down at least a bit. And I can follow the wagon trail at least a while before rain flushes it away.
So I start running again, trying to keep good speed but not too much to be exhausted. The wagon is only maybe a hundred yards away but the distance is growing. Jacobs peeks backward around the corner of the wagon cabin. He sees me following, and I can hear him curse and then shout to the horse and spank it with the rein. He really does not want to meet me.
Hans Jacobs is alive. It's impossible but it is true. It means that all facts that proved his death are wrong. How many people know this? Where did these false facts come from and why? These questions circle in my head like bats when I run, but all answers are missing.
I enter the forest, and soon the downhill ends. The wagon disappeared from my sight only a few minutes earlier. Now I might start catching him. I turn around a curve and stop abruptly. The wagon is there.
The wagon is standing still beside the road just after a thick bush. Is this an ambush? I look around and listen carefully but I don't hear anything except the rain softly drumming the leaves. I walk closer cautiously. The horse is not there, and also the man is gone.
Jacobs probably realised that I was following him and I might catch him when his speed went down in the forest. He was really quick in unharnessing the horse, as his lead was not that long. He had no time to make any other moves. He just abandoned the wagon to flee quicker. Now that he is riding, it's impossible to catch him up, so I must follow his track to the town, which was clearly his destination. So, I might as well spend a few minutes here examining his wagon.
I go to the wagon, listen once more, and then open the small door. There is a chaos inside, as all things have jumped up and down during his escape, if not earlier. There are not that many things: a matress, a few kettles and kitchenware, an axe and other tools, dirty clothes, and a trunk. I pull the trunk closer to inspect it better. I open the lid, as it is not locked. There are shoemaker's equipment, pieces of leather and a few shoe trees. Jacobs seems to be a shoemaker nowadays. The trunk has a name on the inside of the lid: Josef Murdoch. Also the equipment have the same initials. He has either got the whole trunk from someone, or he is using a false identity. I look at the whip in my hand: JM. Why would he get a whip from a shoemaker? More likely that is his current name.
I am already closing the trunk when I notice that there is something under the shoe trees. I pull it out. It is a book. The History of the Great Battle. I look at it carefully. That too belongs to Josef Murdoch. I turn the pages carefully and notice that the book opens easily from a certain place. He seems to have read the part that tells about the murder of Hans Jacobs.
Otherwise, I cannot find from the wagon anything that would link the owner to Hans Jacobs. He seems to have been very quiet about that.
I think this is all I can learn from the wagon. I leave the whip in it, as I don't need it any more, but I take the book and stuff all other items back to their places. I take off my hood and wrap it around the book. Then I start running again. I can still see the hoof prints on the wet ground, so I start following them. I run toward the town well past the school crossing, but then there have been more people on the road, and the track is getting blurry. Finally I have to admit that the hoof prints are indistinguishable from others, and there is no telling which are which. So, rather than trying to chase him down in the town with pure luck, I might do wiser things. I turn back to the school.
~x~
I knock and enter without waiting. Almeron looks up behind his desk. It is only four days ago when I did the same with the posters.
"Hans Jacobs is alive. He was not assassined" I say. Then I pause for panting, and water is dripping from my clothes and muddy shoes. There is a silence that is only disturbed by my heavy breathing.
"Do you have good evidence?"
"I saw him. I talked to him. I used to know him. It is the same man."
"How did you know it was him? How do you know Jacobs?"
"He used to be in the same troop when I was in the army. But when the battle started, he was in Kalehar unlike the rest of us. I still recognise him, and he recognised me."
I briefly tell him what happened and what I saw in the wagon. I unwrap the book and show it to him. He takes the book on his palm spine down and slowly lets the pages open.
"You are right. This book has been opened from the same place often, while the pages at the end of the book are stiff. He probably was fond of that particular part only."
"This makes no sense. His death is well documented in the history books."
"Herbert, I know you well and you are an excellent observer. Even after thirty years I think you are likely to recognise such a distinctive character. And besides, he clearly reacted to his true name, which he apparently wants to keep secret. Which is not a wonder, as it would cause all kinds of effects if the truth was found, not least to himself. The wonder is how he actually escaped death."
"That is a mystery. He was killed on duty, and he was found dead in front of the Kalehar prison, with a blow in his head. It was such a clear case that mistakes are virtually impossible."
"Maybe. But given that he is alive, it must be either a miserable mistake or a hoax, with probably several people lying. You need to find out which. I think you have the best books and resources for such work in this town. But first, tell me what kind of a man Hans Jacobs was."
"Well, with a single word: negative. He started at the same time as I, and his motivation to join army was clearly not honour or passion for his country. I think he was there only because he liked even less the other places he had been to. He worked enough not to get into trouble, but quite soon it became evident that he was not going to proceed in his career any further than a private. Not that he didn't want to command or control people, but he was not skilled enough to do that for the common good.
"After the first two months, I headed for officer training and saw him less, but we were in the same troop again later. He was short-tempered and unforgiving. Once he was punished for organising a fist-fight."
"So he was selling bets for the fight?"
"Oh no, it was not organised in that sense. He was mad at a sergeant for I don't remember what. So he started to spread word about the sergeant, some nasty rumours. But he was playing it cleverly, so the sergeant thought that the rumours were spread by another person, and the fight was between them. Jacobs must have watched that fight with a crooked smile. But the captain of the troop, Morris was his name, was clever enough to figure out what was actually going on. Jacobs and the sergeant were both punished. So that's what he is like. He was really not my friend at the time."
I pause for a while as there seem to be some untied threads in my story. Then I remember what it is.
"Yes, actually that punishment was that they were sent to Kalehar prison as guards for a month. It is a low-respect position for a soldier. That is the reason why they were there in the first place when the battle started."
"This Jacobs does not sound like someone you want to confront. You must be careful because we don't know what he is up to. We need to find out soon why he is here, and why he is alive. What you witnessed today has a wide relevance, although we don't quite understand what it is."
~x~
I am already awfully late and I hate it. I should go and clean myself but then I would be even more late, so I decide to ignore my squalid appearance and walk directly to the classroom. Luckily my clothes are no longer dripping water, although they are far from dry. The students jump up when I enter and greet me.
"Please be seated. First of all, I apologise for being so late. Some urgent things appeared related to my history research, and it was of utmost importance to deal with those first. I will do all I can to prevent such things from happening again during a class. But I still need to deal with one thing, so I ask you to take your books and start studying in groups of two or three the following topic: 'Political and diplomatic relations between Caldoria and Zanland during the previous century'. I encourage you to cooperate with other groups and pick different decades to look at, so that the whole century is covered. Please write and essay by tomorrow, and I will read them by Friday's class when we will have a more detailed discussion. Any questions? Then, let's get started."
When the students start moving into groups, I say: "And Mr Woodsham, I'd like to have a word with you. Could you please join me outside."
I point to the door with my hand, and Osborn Woodsham glances at Gilbert Amsel before he stands up looking confused. When we are outside, I close the classroom door behind me and turn to him.
"Mr Woodsham, I need to ask you something."
"Okaay," he says.
"I need to contact Sharon Rey."
He pauses for a heartbeat and then gives me an amused, though still suspecting look. "And you expect me to know how to reach her because...?"
"Well, she is your aunt, and if someone in this school knows how, it is most likely you," I say. He shrugs.
"Seeing as you know of my relation to her, surely you know that my family cut ties to her during the battle."
"Yes, I know, but you still know what she did during the battle. I expect that your parents did not tell you that. You have heard it from her directly."
"Sure, but it's not like I've kept in touch with her. I've met her twice and that was over ten years ago."
"Do you know where she lives now or where she lived at the time?"
"Back then I think she had a cottage on the outskirts of a fishing town somewhere on the eastern coast of Ferland," he says with another shrug. "But I don't think she's lived there for a long time."
"And what was the name of the town?"
"Codcliff."
"Is there anyone in the town to whom I could send a letter so that they would bring it to her?"
"I really wouldn't know, but I did get the impression she kept mostly to herself, so..."
I pause to think. If there is no contact person, the probability of a letter sent to a post office or the mayor ending up to Sharon Rey is unfortunately low.
"Why do you need to find her anyhow?" Woodsham asks.
"Well, some new data related to my research on the battle showed up. She is very well informed about those events and I must confirm a few things from her."
"You do know that she wrote a book about it, right? The battle? Even though most of them were burnt, I'd wager you can still probably find one somewhere. A less bigoted country, maybe?" Woodsham says with a small smirk on his face. I decide to ignore that, because based on the new evidence today I am reluctant to defend the official policy any more until I have wrapped my head around this.
"Although Sharon Rey has not been my favourite historian, I have done my homework. I am quite familiar with her writings," I say instead.
"Well then, seeing as you're just as much informed on this subject as I am, if not moreso, I suggest you go do some more of that homework and let me get back to mine. You did just assign us an essay due tomorrow, did you not?" he says, crossing his arms across his chest.
I realise that this is about as much as I can get from him. Actually, he was more helpful than I thought he would be, but also just as annoying.
"Thank you, Mr Woodsham. Your information may prove very important. I will let you know if I am successful with my effort."
He looks me up and down a few times, and then returns to the classroom, while I go back to my apartment to clean, change clothes, and then take the two history books of the battle side by side. I must now compare the specific details presented in them about Jacobs' death. I should also find other sources for comparison.
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Your topic is Rain.
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