Starting as a slight difference in air pressure, the puff of wind came to life at the base of a clump of water-reeds and began its journey along the bank of the local stream. Its passing disturbed a tuft of grass and several blades shivered and shook along their length, but the slight breeze had passed on.

Climbing the side of the bank, the moving air rustled the leaves on a hawthorn bush, dry and crinkley after the drought of early winter, then ducked through the wooden staves of the weathered fence and skidded along the cobbles that paved the back lane leading to the hill.

Dust, dirt and the stems of long dead weeds swirled into the gathering gloom of an English evening, which this far north in Lancashire came long before the shops closed for the day. But this was a Sunday, so all the shops along the lane were shuttered and their owners tucked safely behind the thick, lichen covered, brown stone walls of their cottages and houses.

As the wind gathered in energy and momentum it rattled the panes of glass that separated the hardy occupants from the gathering darkness and twisted away again up the hill. Every chimney in the village was smoking heavily and the wind caught the dense fumes of burning coal, pulling them to greater heights.

One chimney was cold and dark; that belonging to the cloth weaving mill that gave employment to the Sunday-resting villagers. But the wind caught against the edges of the solid brick structure and whipped itself into complex web of individual streams of cold, searching air.

One of the stronger streams left the rest and prodded the sides of the manufactory looking for any possibility of egress. Finding none, for all the doors and windows were securely padlocked for the Sabbath, it rattled the piles of wooden boxes stacked by the main gates and scattered the straw that the horses had trampled into the stable courtyard. One of the horses stamped its feet, whinnied softly and turned to see the source of the noise, but the wind had moved on.

High on the side of the largest mill building, a thin light shone faintly through a pane of grime covered glass, indicating that the manufactory was not totally deserted. Taking a chance, the wind nudged the rotten wood that surrounded the glass and dislodged it inwards, leaving a gap. Through this gap it now traveled and found itself in a strange room dominated by a long wooden bench running down the middle.

On this bench were porcelain bowls, now clean and empty, but standing next to rows and rows of tall glass bottles, each labeled with some unintelligible name and filled with mixtures of white powders and yellow liquids. In wicker baskets test-tubes were stacked to drain themselves dry after a week of use in the cause of science, and complex glass shapes were held in seemingly endless arrays by metal clamps and asbestos string.

By chance, the breeze that had started as a puff of disturbed air down by the stream now found itself in a 19th century research laboratory attached to a cloth weaving mill. It darted around the scattering of metal tripods and rubber gas tubes and swept to the end of the room where the light was coming from a large oil lamp on the bench.

Beside the lamp a young man stood with an open cloth folder from which he was removing page after page of tightly written foolscap paper. He examined each page carefully, checking the front and back for the information it contained and then placing the most informative pages in a separate pile by a large leather attaché case. He had been at this task for some time now, and the pile of papers was growing.

But his work was almost done. A final sheet of foolscap was added to his collection and the rest were returned to the cloth folder and that in turn was returned to a large, open, iron banded safe in the corner of the room. The door on the safe was carefully and noiselessly closed and re-locked.

This was where the wind seized its chance and with a devilish twist dived among the carefully selected stack of papers, sending them flying up and outwards in all directions. With a curse, the young man rushed back across the laboratory and tried to prevent the papers becoming too widely distributed. He did not succeed, and so spent the next few minutes holding the large lamp in one hand while he poked around the darkened corners of the room, picking them up again. Eventually his collection was back together but most of the pages were covered in dirt and dust.

Also, they were now in no particular order, so it was hard to tell if he had found them all, but one final check seemed to convince him. He placed them all in the attacheattaché case, looked around once more, then, blowing out the lamp he left the room. His long journey had just started.

Tomorrow he would leave the English weaving town forever, make his way to London and take a packet steamer to the continent. There he would put his luggage onboard a train and rattle his way, third class, across the countries of France and Austria to a small town south of Prague; Brno, it said on the letter inviting him to come and take up a new, more rewarding professional position.

Until then, Carl Emmanuel Waldschmidt was determined to be very careful and not draw too much attention to himself. He had enjoyed his life in England very much, had become something of an Anglophile, and had made many English friends. He had earned their respect for his dedicated work during the last few years, and he in turn had gained enormous respect for the energy and inventiveness of the Victorian Britons, particularly that of his current employer, William Perkins. If any of them discovered the contents of his case, all that respect would end, and he would be remembered as a traitor, not a hardworking German scientist.

Sadly, he carried his case through the rows and rows of silent spinning and weaving machines, past the bales of wool and vats of dye, and out of a side door by the main gate. As a trusted employee who had been responsible for setting up a brand new method of preparing cloth, he was in possession of his own key to the gate, which he now used for the last time. He would leave it with the porter at the railway station tomorrow, and it would be some days before his absence was noted.

Turning up his coat collar against the wind that had scattered his papers, he walked down the hill and into the cobbled streets of the village. Behind him, in the now empty science laboratory, the air still moved, but sluggishly. As it drifted behind a cabinet it disturbed a sheet of foolscap paper and pushed it through the dust. The ink on the paper only covered one side, but it was neatly written in dark ink and the information it contained changed the course of events two continents away.

Because he had left that single piece of paper behind him, Carl Waldschmidt, had set in motion a chain of events that would not only change his own life, but that of a monk who only wished to be left alone with his quiet life, grow his peas and teach his classes at the local Realschule. Brother Gregory, had he known of it, would have heartedly wished that single sheet of foolscap paper safely back in the German's case. But fate had other ideas.