To the travellers
This road leads to the Borgo Pass. Anyone travelling on Saint
George's day is strongly dissuaded.
"Was this sign standing here already, just a few moments
ago?" Anne-Christine wondered.
"What sign?" asked Lisabeth, still wiping the tears from
her eyes. It was a while before she understood Anne-
Christine's words.
"Oh, never mind!" Lisabeth continued, lauging. "Saint
George's day is somewhere in spring. We don't have to bother.
Besides, we don't even have to cross that pass. But winter is
coming on and we must hurry home."
"How right you are", Anne-Christine agreed. "I prefer
summer heat to this snow. Come on, we'll take out the horses.
That will speed up our journey and we'll keep warmer on
horseback than in an open coach".
"Lucky me, as a Grand Duchess, to possess a real troika",
Lisabeth smiled happily, once they were on their way again.
"This way, all three of us have a horse to ride on."
"I don't like it here", Anne-Christine explained.
"Something is rotten. This region has something menacing. It
gives me the shivers!"
"Yeah, you may be right. But I'm sure the inhabitants will
be most friendly", Lisabeth said. "That is not unusual in
these poor regions. In fact, I ought to know more about my
fellow countrymen, but that will take me some time. At
present, I prefer going to Weezebeecke as fast as
possible".
At the very first inn they found, Lisabeth was already
able to get to know her fellow countrymen much better.
Although the inn was furnished poorly, it appeared rather
crowded. As the two girls entered, conversation stopped
abruptly. All the clients, without exception, made the sign of
the cross as a protection, their eyes showing fear. And, as
the two cold travellers searched for a seat near the
fireplace, the guests, even those who were enjoying their
breakfast, gave up their seats for the girls.
"That won't be necessary", Anne-Christine said in her best
Transsyldavian. But she didn't manage to talk them out of it.
All the clients retired backwards out of the inn, praying and
crossing themselves. After the door had closed, Anne-Christine
and Lisabeth heard the anxious crowd shouting as they quickly
dispersed. The inn-keeper was left alone.
"That is not normal behaviour, is it?" Anne-Christine
asked Lisabeth. "And this happens to me every time I come
here."
"Perhaps they aren't accustomed to seeing noble people
like us", Lisabeth guessed. "Perhaps they aren't accustomed to
anything".
"But it is nice and warm here, isn't it?" Lisabeth said as
she fell onto her chair near the fireplace. "Now I'd like to
have a nice cup of hot soup. Anne, would you like to order
something in that odd little language of yours?"
Anne-Christine did what she could and the inn-keeper, who
hadn't taken his eyes off them for even a second, crossed
himself and hurried to the kitchen. He returned, carrying a
big pot of soup and in silence, started filling their
dishes.
"Still the same garlic taste!" Anne-Christine said loudly.
"It seems they have nothing else but garlic soup over here. I
wonder if there is anything else in this soup but garlic".
"Onions! I'm wild about garlic and onions!" Lisabeth
replied. She emptied her dish as fast as she could and cleaned
it with a lump of bread. "To be honest, I would like some
more."
"Lisabeth, do you hear those howling wolves?" Anne-
Christine asked, as she emptied her last dish.
"Oh yes, I heard them even when we were still on
horseback. But they are cute little animals, you know. You can
chase them away by just calling 'pssst'. My father used to do
that when he was still living in Mongolia and Siberia".
Hearing Lisabeth saying 'pssst' the inn-keeper took a step
backwards, folding his hands together and closing his eyes,
while his lips started to move silently.
"What the hell did he invent this time?" Lisabeth asked.
"Could you ask him what he means?"
"I can try", Anne-Christine said, waiting for the inn-
keeper to end his prayer.
The ensuing conversation was completely incomprehensable
for Lisabeth. But Anne-Christine told her what the inn-keeper
had told:
"This morning, just before we came here, a man arrived on
horseback, surrounded by wolves. He made the same sound as
you, and the wolves scampered away in all directions. This
impressed the guests pretty much".
"You see how right I was!" Lisabeth said proudly. "Is this
man still here? I would like to meet him."
"That is the first question I asked and the answer is
'yes'. He's a foreigner, wearing a top hat and small
spectacles who travels on an unsaddled horse".
"How funny", Lisabeth said. "That sounds like our Govert
Gosseling".
"You may call it funny", Anne-Christine said. "But we also
need our sleep and, with that man around, you are never
safe".
"We'll take different rooms, Anne", Lisabeth said. "We
have the Glasswork with us and I want to sleep well
tonight.
"All right, I know what you're hinting", Anne-Christine
murmured. "When will will we be leaving?"
"It's seven o'clock in the morning now. If we mount our
horses at two o'clock in the afternoon, when will we be able
to reach the next inn?" Lisabeth asked.
"Not before midnight", Anne-Christine calculated swiftly.
"Even if everything goes smoothly it probably will take ten
hours. And you musn't forget the snow. We probably won't be
there until two o'clock in the morning."
"Then we'll leave at one", Lisabeth yawned. She then rose,
carrying the wrapped horse blanket under her arm.
"Govert, are you still asleep?" Anne-Christine asked a few
hours later, tiptoeing into Gosseling's room.
"No, I'm thinking about you and the Service" he whispered,
"for I knew you would pass by here".
"May I enter?" she asked but she didn't wait for an
answer. She approached the bed and sat on one side.
"You know, Govert, I'm still thinking about that
transformation story you told us. Anything influences
everything, doesn't it?"
"You could put it that way", Gosseling said sleepily. "But
sometimes the influence is so weak that you'd do better to
forget about it. Otherwise you'd end with a system described
by a limited number of variables".
He gave a lot of routine information and then pulled up
his blanket, intending to turn over.
"What variables are important to me?" Anne-Christine
asked. Govert had to think about it for a while and sat up in
bed.
"I think the Service is very important to you, as it is to
me", he answered.
"At this moment neither of we two possesses it. Lisabeth
has it, in a wrapped horse-blanket; at least, that is what she
says". said Anne-Christine, giving way assailed by negative
thoughts. "But she didn't even offer me to see it"
"And that's what bothers you, isn't it?" Gosseling asked,
placing his spectacles on his nose and looking at her as if he
wanted to inspect her.
"Of course it bothers me! It's my Service and I don't want
her to lay her hand on it!" Anne-Christine called out
loudly.
"But she is your friend, isn't she? I'm sure she'll give
it back to you", he presumed.
"I'll bet she'll do that but not until she's made me feel
most grateful to her for having recuperated the Glassware. I'm
sure she won't even show it to me before we are at
Weesebeecke. Then she'll hand it to me with a majestic gesture
and then it'll is the great Grand Duchess Lisabeth who has
saved it for me", Anne-Christine cried in a high voice. "I
want to steal it beforehand, all by myself. I'll even let you
take it away from her, if you want to. She'll probably be
asleep by now and the Glasswork can't be far away. I guess you
can take it from her room and, once you've got it, I can chase
you across the globe to steal it back. I prefer that to
receiving it from her hands."
"That's not very kind of you, Anne", Gosseling said
thoughtfully. "After all, Lisabeth is your friend. But I can
understand your feelings and I'll accept your offer. It's
hidden in a wrapped horse-blanket, you said?"
"Yes", Anne-Christine answered firmly. "And it wasn't
packed on the left-hand horse, as she made you believe, it was
hidden below the front seat. After you made the mistake of
believing her, she laughed at you until tears were pouring
down her face, you may be sure!"
"You are really angry at her, aren't you?" Gosseling
asked. Anne-Christine saw his eyes shine as if he was amused
by a private joke. "I'll see what I can do for you, Anne".
Gosseling slipped out of a voluminous pile of blankets and
was surprised at the coldness of the floor.
"It's getting cold already. We can't afford to get in each
other's way much longer, as we might never get back home!" he
said, putting on some clotes.
"I'll join you but I'll stay outside so that Lisabeth
won't see me", Anne-Christine said, following Gosseling out of
the room.
"The second room on the left", she whispered as Gosseling
closed his door carefully.
Gosselng tiptoed to the indicated room and glanced at
Anne-Christine as he turned the knob. Anne-Christine smiled to
encourage him. He went in but came out quickly.
"She isn't there!" the scientist called. "Her clothes are
there but she isn't in bed. The bed hasn't even been
used".
Anne-Christine ran to Lisabeth's room and saw at once that
the scientist's was right. Her friend's clothes lay on a chair
but she herself was nowhere.
"And the blanket with the Crystal?" Anne-Christine asked,
"Did you look for it already?"
"Not yet", said Gosseling, who seemed a little
confused.
They searched the entire room but didn't find any trace of
Lisabeth or of the Glasswork.
"Come on, to my room, then we can think about what we can
do", Anne-Christine proposed. "I don't like the latest
developments".
"A good idea", Gosseling answered. "I can't understand it
either. I don't believe Lisabeth is a girl who would cheat
you. I can hardly imagine her sneaking away with your
Treasure."
"For the moment, I exclude no possiblity", Anne-Christine
said. "She could have been very clever indeed. Her intention
in giving me a separate room may well have been to sneak away
alone when I was sound asleep. First I'll check if all the
horses are still here".
She left the room and Gosseling heard her walking down the
stairs. She returned after a short while.
"All the horses are still there and the inn-keeper hasn't
seen her either," said Anne-Christine.
"Then she must still be inside this inn!" cried Gosseling.
"She can't vanish into thin air, can she?"
Anne-Christine thought for a while and finally said:
"She may have travelled to another time or another space.
After all, she is in possession of the Service and the sun
rose some time ago. Who knows were she may be at this
moment!"
"That isn't possible, Anne", said Gosseling. "If you
travel in time, you don't really disappear. When I brought
back the Service, you didn't see me disappear, did you?"
"No", Anne-Christine answered timidly. "But you may have
taken it away extremely swiftly".
"You are right", Gosseling said. "But when I travel by my
concentrated thoughts, I feel my body stays where I start my
journey".
"Perhaps what you feel is not accurate and perhaps your
body does move with you", Anne-Christine continued. "For you
also can take things to the present. Why don't you travel
through time now, just a little bit? Then I can check whether
your body disappears or not".
Gosseling was startled by this proposal.
"Anne! Time travelling is not a joke. It costs a
tremendous effort. And besides, I can't see where I land, for
the Glassware is missing. Perhaps I'll land in the middle of a
moor. Something like that happened to me once before. No, I
don't even want to think about it!"
"Then you just tell me how to do it", Anne-Christine
proposed after thinking about it for a while. "I'm prepared to
take the risk alone. You want to do me that favour, don't
you?"
"Of course", Gosseling said. "Do you want to learn time-
travelling right here and now?"
"Yes, for heaven knows what damage Lisabeth has done
already", Anne-Christine replied.
"That's not the right attitude, Anne", Gosseling said.
"You must concentrate on where you want to go and not on your
present sorrows".
"Oh dear", Anne-Christine said. "That will be difficult
indeed, for I can't get rid of the thought that Lisabeth is
somewhere, messing around with my belongings".
"Then you'll have to try even harder, for it's the only
way, really. You must be free of all sorrows and you have to
focus on the place and the time where you want to go to. Once
you'll arrive, you can think of the task ahead. But where do
you want to go?" Gosseling asked, looking thoughtfully at
Anne-Christine.
Anne-Christine didn't know.
"Where would you go if you were Lisabeth?" she
countered.
The scientist couldn't suppress a laugh.
"So, for a moment, I'm Lisabeth and I can travel through
time and space?" he acquiesced. "Then I would go to
Weezebeecke, presumably".
"Why?" asked Anne-Christine very inquisitive.
"Yes, why? Any place would do, of course. It's just a
matter of how one feels and that's why I say Weezebeecke. But
if you have a better idea.."
"No, no..." Anne-Christine interrupted. "To me, too, that
seems the most probable place to go and I'll try to get home,
hoping to meet her there before she can do anything foolish
with my Service".
"Oh well, perhaps she is just putting it there safely and
neatly, to avoid carrying it all the way back home". Gosseling
suggested. "She may be back here in an hour or so, to join us
on our trip to Weezebeecke."
"She shouldn't be so self-willed!" Anne-Christine replied
angrily. "Then I wouldn't have to learn to travel through time
and space. Well, what else do I need to get to
Weezebeecke?"
"You have to empty your head entirely", Gosseling said.
"You must feel neither desire nor sorrow and you must forget
everything around you. The moment you have freed yourself from
your surroundings and your body, you must fill the emptiness
with images of your Castle."
"All right!" Anne-Christine said, "That sounds plausible
and I'll do my best".
She closed her eyes and didn't move for a while.
"I really can't do it!" she said after a few moments. "I
keep on thinking of that stupid Lisabeth, wandering around
with my Service. And I can hear you breathing. That annoys me
too".
"There's a remedy for that", Gosseling declared. "It's
just a simple, well-known beginner's problem. You must solve
that. The old wise man from the East who likes to meditate
recommends that you repeat a short phrase very many times. If
you concentrate on that, then you'll drive out other sounds
and thoughts. You'll have to admit that it works. After you've
tried, you'll see".
"What kind of a phrase do I need to repeat?" Anne-
Christine asked in surprise.
"Oh, any phrase will do. It doesn't have to make sense or
form a real sentence. Even odd syllables will do fine, if
together they aren't too long. The sound is particulary
important. For instance: 'How stupid I am' would be perfect
for this purpose. That's a phrase with which you can begin to
efface yourself and it sounds very good too."
"If that's the way it works", Anne-Christine said, before
starting to repeat Gosseling's phrase in a monotonous way.
"I Still can't do it. Really, I can't", Anne-Christine
said, after telling herself several hundred times how stupid
she was. "I'm still thinking of a million things. But it
wasn't in vain after all, because one thing that came to my
mind was that Lisabeth didn't have to start from our time in
order to go to era. She may have started from another time and
returned to her own time by now after having visiting our
time. If that is so, she won't have left any trace when she
disappeared".
"That is possible, Anne, I agree and I find your
hypothesis very clever. But who is she, then, coming from
another era to ours? She will have something to do with the
Muscovite Glassware, won't she? And what's more: she looks
very much like you. She will be related to you, be it from the
past or be it in the future. Perhaps she is your own
daughter!" Gosseling said, unable to hide a smile.
"I know nothing about her, actually", Anne-Christine said,
getting to the heart of the matter. "But that doesn't mean
she's my daughter, just because she looks a bit like me. She
may be anybody, for the evidence she gave is hardly
convincing. All she showed us was a little travel-icon and all
she told us were a few doubtful stories about a father. We
still don't know who she really was. She may have been one of
Attila's lovers."
"That's hardly probable", Gosseling said. "In that case,
she wouldn't speak our language very fluently. It rather seems
to me she comes from an era close to ours".
"Wherever she comes from," said Anne-Christine very
disturbed, "in my opinion she comes from another time and she
has taken the Service with her. She got me to trust her, just
in order to run away with my most precious treasure!" Anne-
Christine burst out into tears.
"Come on. It can't be that bad, really", Gosseling said,
embracing her gently. "You just don't know what happened and
you mustn't immediately start thinking the worst. Perhaps she
went for a stroll. Perhaps the Grand Duke's elixer started to
work again and she went sleep walking!"
"No that can't be true", replied Anne-Christine angrily,
"for in that case, the inn-keeper would have seen her walking.
There's only one way out of this inn".
"Maybe she took another way out. Sleep-walkers do some
unusual things, like climbing a wall up or down while fully
asleep. One hears extraordinairy stories," said Gosseling.
Anne-Christine immediately went to the window and opened it
with a brisk gesture. The cold wind blew through the shutters,
which she also opened. Gosseling shivered.
"Not a single footmark!" Anne-Christine said quietly. "The
snow has not been trodden, so Lisabeth didn't leave on foot.
There's else must have happened. But what?"
She then seemed to lapse into a deep meditation, from
which Gosseling roused her after a while.
"If Lisabeth went back to her own era, taking your Service
with her, then you have an impossible mission to fulfill,
Anne. Where do you want to find her?" he asked. "She may come
from any era and who knows what other times she may visit.
This will lead to an infernal chase to find her, criss-
crossing the centuries in the hunt for a Crystal Service. That
is sheer nonsense, isn't it? Personally, I wouldn't even know
where to start such a chase."
"I never should have given you those letters! You and your
glib talk!" Anne-Christine said. "Now I have to start all over
again and I don't have the slightest clue". Tears were running
down her cheeks once more.
"But you?" Anne-Christine suddenly asked. "You take things
so easily. Don't you mind that the Service is gone? This
Crystal means a lot to you too, doesn't it?"
Gosseling didn't know what to say at first.
"Yes.... It means a lot to me Anne, honestly, but if it is
really gone, as you think, then I wouldn't know where to find
it", he answered at last.
"If..., if...?" Don't you have any idea where this Service
may be?" Anne-Christine asked. "You are so cool and unruffled.
I don't like that at all. Are you responsible for Lisabeth's
and the Glassware's disappearance?"
Gosseling laughed loudly when he heard those words. "You
are very close to solving the problem, Anne", he cried and
Anne-Christine was astonished at his reaction.
"I really am stupid a hundred times", she said, becoming
aware of her mistake. "You'd better leave. I'm going to try to
sleep for the last couple of hours".
"That is the best you can do", Gosseling said. "Sleep
tight". He kissed Anne-Christine on the forehead, before he
walked out of her room and closed the door.
At one o'clock, as agreed, Anne-Christine, Lisabeth and
Gosseling were on horseback.
"Please do inform me beforehand about your plans to share
Gosseling's bed", Anne-Christine said sulkily to Lisabeth,
while Gosseling had difficulty preventing himself from
bursting into laughter.