14: Radishes

We all went back to the temple of Shallya and I donated the two gold medals to the cult. I knew they would be quite valuable, worth perhaps ten crowns each, just for the gold. When I was handing them over to Father Gunther I noticed that there did seem to be a lot of expensive items in his room. He seemed to have a selection of wines and brandies, with some fine glasses and some silver accoutrements on his desk. It did make me wonder how much they were worth and whether that was the sort of thing that should be going to help the poor, instead. No priest really needed a silver writing set, or the finest brandy, surely?

We also handed Gudrun over to the infirmary. Gudrun, it turned out had Ratte Fever, too, and it was particularly serious as he was heavily wounded. Father Gunther had been studying the disease and he had found a potential cure which involved mixing wierdroot with rat saliva. He thought he could use some of the bodily fuilds of the rat creature we had brought in earlier, instead. This sounded like sound science, to me. However, we needed to get hold of some weirdroot. Gunther warned us about talking about the rat-man in public, as he was worried about how people might react if they knew that the rat mutant things lived among us (if they do, which they probably don’t).

We needed to get the weirdroot as soon as possible. Despite my recent study of herbiary, I didn’t know precisely where it could be found, forests and moonlit spots, which my textbook described, sounded a bit vague. I considered wandering round the forest at night until I found some, but Otto said it would be much easier to just buy some on the streets. Weirdroot was often eaten for its hallucinogenic properties. It was highly illegal, but some people seemed to enjoy it so much that they would risk the ire of law to do it. It seemed like a bit of a purposeless recreation, but Kurtis told me he had tried it once and it was quite good.

Otto was also concerned about his dog. Olga the rat catcher had run away with Schnitzel and we didn’t know if it was to save the dog or to steal him. But we guessed that she would be hanging out at the Rat Catchers Arms, so wouldn’t be too hard to find. That inn was in exactly the sort of area that we might be able to buy some weirdroot, too, so we could kill two birds with one stone.

While we were hanging out we noticed that we seemed to have attracted the attention of a butler-looking fellow. He introduced himself as Moritz, a servant of the von Bruner family, and he asked us if we would visit the lady Gutele von Bruner later that day, which we agreed to do. The von Bruners were one of the oldest and wealthiest noble families in Ubersreik so we thought maybe Nacht had put in a good word for us among her noble friends now that we had proved we could be relied upon to investigate stuff with discretion and professionalism.

First we needed to go back to the Ratcatchers’ Arms and see if we could find Olga, to get Schnitzel back. She took some finding and some persuading but eventually Otto and Schnitzel were reunited which made Otto happy, but, and I am not a dog person, Schnitzel didn’t seem to care either way. Otto resolved to get a lead to stop the dog running off in future, but he didn’t think to just tie a piece of string around its neck.

Then Otto and Erhardt went off to score some weirdroot and picked out someone they thought might be able to get some. They asked for herbs and spice which is what they thought the street name for weirdroot was. The bloke said he could get some but it would cost five shillings. After they waited for a bit, he turned up with a couple of things and took the money. Otto immediately thought he’d been ripped off. He’d been given what looked like a radish and a stick of cinnamon. He gave the cinnamon to Kurtis and ate the radish.

We travelled out of the city to the von Bruner mansion. I wasn’t too sure about going with my Ratte Fever, as I thought it was probably impolite to give diseases to the nobility, but I went along anyway, just to make sure everyone else behaved properly. As we walked Otto began to act increasingly strangely, and so, as a newly trained herbalist I can now say with some confidence that weirdroot looks a lot like radish, after all. Not only had he managed not to realise he had got the weirdroot we were after, but he ate it all anyway and left us with no weirdroot after all. But he didn’t seem to care about that, instead he was chatting freely about the cool shapes of the trees and the clouds.

The von Bruner mansion was huge, if a bit old and faded, and we were met by Moritz at the door and ushered into one of the many receptions. Not the best reception, I imagined, but it was still incredibly impressive. I couldn’t help thinking how many orphans you could house in the entire mansion. You could probably get ten to live comfortably in that reception alone.

Then Gutele von Bruner arrived. She was dressed immaculately in the latest fashion and was young and beautiful. I immediately looked at Kurtis, and of course, his mouth was open, and his tongue was hanging out, metaphorically, and almost literally, too. The sad thing was, with his delusions of a noble father, he probably thought they were actually of the same class, and he stood a decent chance with her. I resolved to keep him away from Gutele as best I could as I feared this could only end it tears.

Gutele explained why she had summoned us. Apparently, she had been waylaid by a highwayman a few weeks ago, which wasn’t that unusual, but her highwayman had looked exactly like the Fishrook, who was a famous highwayman of about one hundred years ago, who had been hanged for his crimes. How could this be the same man?

About fifty years ago a popular novel had been published called the The Fishrook Dalliance, which had been about him, which no doubt embellished the story a bit, and had made the Fishrook famous. Now someone was obviously impersonating him and carrying out copy-cat crimes. Gutele wanted us to capture the fellow and offered us ten Gold Crowns in reward, which seemed like a lot of money.

However, I got the impression she did not want to actually bring the Fishrook to justice, she just wanted to meet him again. She spoke about their meeting breathlessly and described how he had complimented her and allowed her to keep her ring because it was as attractive as she was. She had even written up an account of the robbery and she proudly handed us a copy each, even to those of us who couldn’t read. She revealed she had plans to write her own novel telling of this new Fishrook. Honestly, the nobility live in some sort of dream world, I think. Who would be interested in reading a novel about events like this happening around Ubersreik in this day and age?

While we were talking, another nob, Boniel, walked into the room. He told Gutele to hurry up as he wanted to play a game with her, and then he left. It seems like the nobility really do just stay home and play all day. It was pretty clear that Gutele and Boniel were twins, I think, but Otto got the notion that Gutele and Boniel were romantically involved. I’m not sure about his instincts as practically everything Otto says turns out to be wrong (besides, he was as high as a gyrocopter), but there did seem to be a bit of a connection between the two of them. That’s what the nobility are like, though, they are a law unto themselves and not restricted by the conventions that rule the rest of us, and woe betide anyone who points this out.