THE MASTER did not reappear for several days, and meanwhile the mill stood still. The miller’s men lay on their beds or sat by the warm stove. Had there ever been a journeyman called Michael who worked at the mill in the fen? Even Merten never spoke of him; he never spoke at all, he sat there from morning to night saying nothing. Only once, on the evening of New Year’s Day, when Juro brought up the dead man’s clothes and laid them at the foot of the empty bed, did he wake out of his trance. He ran out to the barn and hid in the hay until morning. Ever since that he had been utterly listless, seeing and hearing nothing, saying and doing nothing, just sitting about.
These days Krabat’s thoughts kept circling around the same tormenting questions. It seemed plain that Tonda and Michal could not both have died by chance, both on New Year’s Eve. What game was being played—and who was playing it, and what were the rules?
The miller stayed away until the eve of Twelfth Night. Vitko was just about to blow out the light when the attic door opened, and the Master appeared on the threshold, pale as death. He cast a glance around, but he did not seem to notice Michal’s absence. “To work!” he ordered them. Then he turned, and was not seen again that night.
Hastily, the men dressed and hurried downstairs. Petar and Stashko ran to the millpond to open the sluice. The others stumbled into the grinding room, tipped out the grain, and set the mill grinding. It began to go around, rattling and clattering, and the miller’s men felt their hearts lift.
“The mill is grinding again,” thought Krabat, “and life goes on . . .”
They finished work about midnight, and when they came into the attic they saw someone lying on Michal’s old bed, a boy of about fourteen, who looked small for his age. The lad had a sooty face and very red ears. Full of curiosity, the miller’s men surrounded him, and Krabat, who was holding the lantern, shone it on him. At that the boy woke, and when he saw the eleven ghosts standing by his bed he was frightened. Krabat felt sure he had seen him before—when could it have been?
“No need to be afraid of us!” he said. “We’re the miller’s men, and we work here. What’s your name?”
“Lobosch. What’s yours?”
“I’m Krabat, and this is . . .”
The sooty-faced urchin interrupted him. “Krabat? I once knew someone called Krabat . . .”
“Did you?”
“But he’d be younger than you . . .”
Light dawned on Krabat. “You must be little Lobosch from Maukendorf!” he cried. “And you’ve blackened your face to play the part of one of the Three Kings from the East!”
“That’s right,” said Lobosch, “and for the last time too! I’m apprenticed to the miller here now!”
He said this full of pride, and the miller’s men kept their thoughts to themselves.
When Lobosch came down to breakfast next morning, he was wearing Michal’s clothes. He had tried to scrub the soot off, not entirely successfully; there were still traces around the corners of his eyes and his nose.
“Never mind!” said Andrush. “A morning in the meal-store will clean that off!”
The boy was hungry, and he wolfed down his oatmeal. Krabat, Andrush and Stashko, who were sharing the same dish, were amazed at the amount he could eat.
“If you work as well as you eat the rest of us can take it easy!” said Stashko.
Lobosch looked at him, a question in his eyes. “Ought I to eat less?”
“No, no, eat all you want!” said Krabat. “You’ll need all the strength you can get. No one need go hungry here.”
But instead of spooning up more oatmeal, Lobosch put his head on one side and studied Krabat, his eyes narrowed.
“Why, you might be his big brother!” he said.
“Whose big brother?”
“That other Krabat’s, of course! You remember, I told you I knew someone else called Krabat.”
“Whose voice was just breaking, eh? He left you in Gross-Partwitz.”
“How do you know?” asked the bewildered Lobosch. Then he struck his forehead. “What a silly mistake to make!” he cried. “Why, at the time I took you for maybe a year and a half older than me, two years older at the most . . .”
“I am five years older than you,” said Krabat.
At that moment the door opened, and in came the Master. The miller’s men shrank back from him.
“Hm!” said he, going up to the new apprentice. “You talk too much—you’d better get out of the habit of that.” He turned to Krabat, Stashko and Andrush. “He’s to eat his breakfast, not chatter! Get that into his head.”
And the Master left the servants’ hall, shutting the door behind him.
Suddenly Lobosch seemed to have had enough. He put down his spoon, hunched his shoulders, and sat there with his head bent. When he glanced up, Krabat nodded to him across the table—only very slightly, but the boy seemed to understand. He knew that he had a friend at this mill.
Lobosch, in his turn, had to spend a morning in the meal-store. The Master came for him after breakfast.
“Why should he have an easier time than the rest of us?” said Lyshko. “A bit of flour won’t hurt him.”
Krabat said nothing. He was thinking of Tonda and Michal. If he wanted to help Lobosch he must not make Lyshko suspicious, even over the smallest matters.
Just now there was nothing he could do for the boy. Lobosch would have to get through the morning as best he could, wielding his broom amid clouds of flour dust, his eyelashes stuck together, his nose clogged up. There was no help for that; he must manage somehow. Krabat could hardly wait until Juro called them in to dinner. While the others made their way to the servants’ hall, he ran to the meal-store, shot back the bolt and flung the door open. “Come on out—it’s midday!” he said.
Lobosch was crouching in a corner, his knees drawn up, his head in his hands. When Krabat called to him, he jumped. Then he came toward the door, slowly, dragging the broom behind him. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“I couldn’t do it,” he said in a very small voice. “So after a bit I—I just stopped and sat down. Do you—do you think the Master will send me packing?”
“There’ll be no reason for him to do any such thing!” said Krabat.
Uttering a magic spell, he traced a pentagram in the air with his left hand. Thereupon the dust in the room rose up, as if the wind were blowing it from every nook and cranny. It sailed out of the door like a plume of white smoke, over Lobosch’s head, and away in the direction of the wood.
The room was swept clear. There was not a speck of dust left. The boy opened his eyes wide. “How did you do that?” he asked.
Krabat left the question unanswered. “Promise not to tell a soul!” said he. “Now, let’s go in, Lobosch; our soup will be getting cold.”
That evening, after the new apprentice had gone to bed, the miller summoned his journeymen and Vitko to his room, and they admitted Vitko to their company just as Krabat had been admitted on Twelfth Night the year before, according to the rules of the mill and the custom of the guild. Hanzo and Petar vouched for Vitko to the Master, and then the red-headed boy was declared free of his indentures. The Master touched his head and shoulers with the blade of the hatchet. “In the name of the guild, Vitko . . .”
Andrus had an empty flour sack waiting in the hall. As soon as the Master dismissed them they popped it over Vitko’s head, took the newly made journeyman miller off to the grinding room and there “put him through the mill.”
“Gently with him!” Hanzo warned them. “Don’t forget how thin he is!”
“Thin or not,” said Andrush, “a journeyman miller is no feeble little tailor! He must be able to stand up for himself! Come along, brothers, let’s get on with it!”
In accordance with their usual custom, they gave Vitko a thorough working over, but Andrush told them to stop sooner than he had last year, when it was Krabat’s turn. Petar took the sack off, Stashko scattered flour over Vitko’s head and declared that he had “been through the mill.” Then they seized him and tossed him in the air three times, after which he had to drink a toast to them.
“Your health, brother!”
“Here’s to you!”
The wine was no worse than usual this Twelfth Night, yet the miller’s men could not really manage to feel merry, and that was Merten’s doing. He had worked in silence all day, eaten his meals in silence, he stood by in silence while they worked Vitko over, and now he sat on a meal bin, stiff as a post, taking no interest in the proceedings, and there was nothing, nothing at all, that could persuade him to break his silence.
“Hey there!” said Lyshko. “You look as if you had a nasty smell under your nose!” Grinning, he held out a full tankard to him. “Get drunk, why don’t you, Merten? Just spare us that glum face of yours!”
Merten got up. Without a word, he went up to Lyshko and struck the tankard out of his hand. The two men stood facing each other, eye to eye. Lyshko began to sweat. The others held their breath.
It was quiet in the room, quiet as the grave. Outside in the passage they heard a soft tapping that hesitated and then came closer. All of them, Merten and Lyshko included, looked at the door, and Krabat, who was nearest to it, opened it.
Lobosch was standing on the threshold, barefoot, in his shirt, a blanket around his shoulders.
“Hello, so it’s you, is it, Your Majesty?” said Krabat.
“Yes, it’s me. I was frightened, all alone in the attic,” said Lobosch. “Aren’t you ever coming to bed?”