Chapter Text
“That gap reminds me of Fritz’s smile. When we were kids, we fought and I knocked out his two front teeth… I wonder where he’s ended up now?”
Hans had walked by the large gap in Kuttenberg’s easternmost wall countless times since coming to the city. From the inside as well as the outside. It wasn’t all that far from Henry’s forge, or from the Hole on the Wall, and while he didn’t exactly ogle it, given the men slaving away to repair it day in and day out, it was somewhat hard to miss. Henry had walked past it countless more times, Hans was sure, not counting the handful of times they’d passed it together, but this time, he stopped at a tree across the road from the gap and sat in its shade with a soft chuckle. “That gap reminds me of Fritz’s smile,” he volunteered, once Hans had sat beside him with a questioning look. “When we were kids, we fought and I knocked out his two front teeth… I wonder where he’s ended up now?”
“Fritz?” Hans echoed. It had been a long while since Henry had mentioned anyone from Skalitz apart from Theresa. He thought he remembered the name; a hazy memory of a frustrated Henry ranting about his friends trying to steal from the Talmberg quarrymen danced behind Hans’ eyes, but he hadn’t really been paying all that much attention to what Henry was saying. He’d just let the man vent and then forgotten about the whole thing.
Now, though, things were different. Henry’s life—besides surviving Skalitz, being Radzig’s bastard blacksmith son, and courting Bianca before Theresa—was an empty void for Hans. He hadn’t pressed for details back in Rattay, and with everything that had happened since Trosky, he simply hadn’t had time. Now though, as they wasted away the weeks in Kuttenberg, counting down to Hans’ inevitable, unavoidable wedding, all he had was time with his enigma of a squire. “He was the one who planned to rob the quarry, wasn’t he?” he asked, apparently startling Henry from his reminiscence.
“What, Fritz?” Beside him, Henry shook his head. “Nah, Matthew was the one that planned it. Fritz was there for the silver and a good fight. He didn’t care much for the finer details of it. I s’pose he’s always been like that.”
“And… did they manage to steal from Sir Divish?” Hans asked carefully, his gaze pulled beyond Henry’s face to the executioner’s hill a little further north. Five corpses still dangled there, in various stages of rot. None of them were Henry’s Fritz or Matthew, of course, but four of them had also been involved in a plot to steal silver, and Henry had been the one to see them hanged. Hans couldn’t well imagine the same man aiding such a theft from Lord Divish, even if the thieves were childhood friends.
Hans relaxed a little when Henry sighed, “No,” his face twisted into an annoyed grimace. “No… They’d’ve gotten themselves hanged, even with my help. Instead, I took a score pounds of silver out of my own coffers—from Pribyslavitz—and told them I’d nicked it from Talmberg in the night.”
“You—” Hans suddenly had several questions about several aspects of Henry’s nonchalant recounting, but he started with the most important: “What?”
“Aye,” Henry chuckled. “Maybe it was foolish of me, but Matthew ’n’ Fritz are my friends, an’ I wasn’t about to let them hang for something so stupid as that. Maybe I should’ve let them alone, but I only sought them out to invite them to work in Pribyslavitz an’ do somethin’ decent for once. I should’ve expected they’d rope me into some hare-brained plan for glory.”
“So you just… decided to give them a few thousand groschen?” Hans asked, not sure if he was more shocked by Henry’s expression of outrageous generosity, or the knowledge that his turnip-turning, peasant boy squire was sitting on enough groschen to throw a couple of delinquents enough to never work again.
But Henry just laughed, leaning back on the log they were both sat on with a smug little grin. “Well, I tried to talk them out of the whole plan, first.”
“I’m glad!”
“It didn’t go all that well.”
“I figured, based on your giving them twenty pounds of silver.”
“It was actually a little more than—”
Hans cuffed him on the shoulder. “Henry!”
“...An’ I actually did break into Talmberg, to see how much money they were after.”
“Mary, Mother of God, I’m living with a lunatic.”
Henry, it seemed, didn’t much mind being called a lunatic. He laughed heartily at Hans’ stricken face, his deep blue eyes sparkling like sapphires in the dying evening light. “It was better that way, I promise! I had reason to be in Talmberg, and they didn’t. No money was stolen, no one got hurt, and unless you tell Sir Divish, no one is any the wiser.”
Hans groaned. “God in Heaven… Did they turn over a new leaf, at least, once they got their payday?” He was almost afraid of the answer. Henry had wondered what Fritz was doing now, after his little tale about knocking in his teeth. Hans tried not to look at the executioner’s hill again; for all he or Henry knew, Fritz might have squandered Henry’s misplaced generosity and found himself hanging anyway.
“Sort of,” Henry sighed, shifting on the log so he was leaning ever so subtly into Hans’ side. “After payin’ them off, I did invite them to come work in Pribyslavitz, where they spent more time pissing away the money at the tavern than doing anything useful. I had to sit in judgement over them not long after. Fritz had picked a fight with another patron, after he’d called him a layabout.”
“Well he wasn’t wrong,” Hans huffed, already imagining that if he ever saw this Fritz the gap in the wall reminded Henry of, he’d sock him in the mouth for being a bad influence. That Hans preferred to spend his time in taverns and had himself goaded Henry into a tavern brawl—not once, but twice—was beside the point.
“He wasn’t,” Henry agreed. “And I told them so. Either they’d straighten out, or I’d throw them out myself. The other townsfolk didn’t like that so much at first, but they were still my friends. Idiot friends, but they lost everything in Skalitz, too. And… I think that finally got through to them, that I was givin’ them their last chance. They stopped makin’ trouble for Adam at the tavern, an’ Marius even mentioned they’d taken shifts with the town guard last I was in Pribyslavitz. But that was so long ago now that who knows what they’ve gotten themselves into.”
Hans hummed, but managed to keep his more judgemental thoughts to himself. “Were they always like that, Fritz and Matthew?” he asked, once he’d managed to reign in his tongue and keep his tone level. He’d asked about Henry’s friends to learn more about Henry, after all, not to pointlessly compare the people Henry associated with.
“They’ve always been the sort to prefer getting out of work than doing it,” Henry shrugged. “But robbing the quarrymen was a lot, even for them. Usually, Matthew would come up with some prank or trick and get Fritz and I to pull it off, like when we painted Deutsch’s house with shit for what he was sayin’ about Wenceslas. Sometimes Matthias—he’s the other one our age—would try an’ talk us out of it, but sometimes he’d join, too.”
“A whole pack of troublemakers, then. It’s a wonder you turned out alright,” Hans said dryly, though he didn’t find it terribly hard to imagine Henry lobbing handfuls of shit at some loudmouth’s house.
“Like you’re one to talk!” Henry poked Hans in the shoulder, hard enough to make him wince. Despite the literal jab, Henry was still smiling. “You had me hidin’ in bushes recitin’ poetry, and playin’ the village idiot for the butcher when he came lookin’. That’s exactly the sort of thing Matthew would’ve put me up to!”
Hans waved Henry off with a hearty laugh. “That was nothing! Service to your lord!”
“And sneakin’ into the Rathaus cellar for a pitcher of wine?”
“A trifle!”
Henry groaned loudly, throwing his head back in a grandiose display of annoyance. It made Hans’ chest feel warm and fit to burst, and he threw an arm around Henry’s shoulders before either one of them could think better of it. “Face it, my dear Henry,” he declared. “You are too generous a friend for anyone in this world. It is only by unfortunate happenstance all your friends are incorrigible pricks!”