Swept Away (23 page)

E
lla was
the first to see Alice return. The novice was young and strong and was striding yards ahead of the elderly monk who struggled to climb the steep hill to the cave. Greta broke away to help him the last few steps to the clearing where they all sat outside the cave. The weather was cold and the nuns—many of whom were barefoot and dressed only in nightdresses—sat huddled together against the unmerciful wind.

Alice carried a basket containing fresh bread, cheese, wine and two cups. The nuns swarmed her and began dividing up the food.

Greta led Brother Albert to a large round stone on which he sat. Greta and Ella sat down beside him. One of the novices brought him a cup of wine.

“All of Heidelberg looks for you this day,” he said, wheezing slightly and accepting the wine with a nod of thanks.

“We expected as much,” Greta said. “The convent?”

“Gone,” he said. “Destroyed in the fire.”

“And the man they took?” Ella asked. “What news of him do you have?”

The monk looked at Greta as if needing assurance that this strange woman could be trusted.

“Please, Brother,” Greta said. “What have you heard?”

The monk sighed and downed all of the wine from the cup before handing it to the novice for a refill.

“Christof has survived his wounds. His brother is not to be held responsible.”

“That explains a lot,” Ella said with disgust.

“Krüger has decreed that you are all to be found and killed,” he said. “There is a bounty.”

Greta sucked in a breath. Although it wasn't a surprise, hearing it said out loud shook her.

“The man they captured has been taken to the castle,” Brother Albert said.

“He is still alive?” Ella asked. She clenched her fists in anguish.

“He is,” the monk said. “But scheduled to die by fire in the square.”

“They think he is a warlock?” Greta asked.

The monk nodded.

“When?” Ella asked. “When is he to die?”

“Tomorrow at noon.”

Ella fought against the feeling of futility and fear that threatened to overwhelm her.

Greta took the man's cup and beckoned to one of the novices to refill it. “Alright, Brother,” she said. “We need your help.”

Brother Albert looked around the cave and the surrounding countryside. “Anything, Mother. You have but to ask.”

T
he rest
of the day was spent with Greta translating for Ella to the monk and explaining what they needed him to do. Greta reminded him that helping them would endanger himself and the other brothers. But she also stressed that he was their only hope. Midway into the day, it became clear that other monks would be needed if the plan was to succeed. Brother Albert penned a note outlining the men and materials he would need for Alice to take to the monastery.

“Three letters, Brother,” Ella said, ticking them off on her fingers. “One from Axel to that guy Burkmeister he does business with rejoicing in his depraved activities with the Devil. We'll send it to the magistrate again. Maybe he just needs a little encouragement.”

The monk looked at Greta with confusion. “I cannot forge Axel's writing,” he said. “I know not how the man writes.”

“Don't worry, Brother,” Ella said. “We got that covered. Where was I? Two.” She held up her fingers. “An anonymous letter to Krüger from ‘a concerned friend,' suggesting he contact the midwife about the widely held belief of Axel's illegitimacy.”

“And finally,” Ella said, ignoring Brother Albert's surprised expression, “we'll need a letter also in Axel's hand to the Sheriff of Heidelberg, revealing Krüger's plot to kill Eric Reicher.”

The monk looked from Greta to Ella and back again.

“I will need more wine,” he said.

Before dinnertime, Brother Albert had dispatched four brother monks dressed as peasants to visit as many public houses as possible. Their assignment was to drink and talk openly about the rumored plot to kill Reicher. If questioned, they were instructed to say they heard the rumor bandied about in the streets and that everybody in Heidelberg knew about the plot.

After these monks left, another sat inside the cave with a makeshift wooden desk and carefully wrote the letters Greta and Ella dictated to him. Ella could tell that, unlike Brother Albert, this man didn't trust her nor did he understand why he was being instructed to create fictitious letters. When it came time to create Axel's letter, Ella powered up her iPhone from the mail pouch and showed the seated man an enlarged depiction of the photograph she had taken of Axel's writing.

“You can see how he loops his ‘L's really distinctively.” she said, showing the monk the screen. “What a narcissistic jerk. See?” She took her fingers to pinch the cellphone screen to enlarge the type.

The man gaped in horror, first at the phone and then at her. “You…what
is
that? How are you able to—?”

“Brother,” Ella said as patiently as she could, the vision of Rowan being manhandled in the front room of the burning nunnery clear in her memory. “You have Mother Superior's word that I am on the side of the angels. This is just a gadget created in the Far East where they are much cleverer about these sorts of things than Europe is right now. No offense. I'm not creating magic, I'm just using a tool like you'd use a pen or a hammer or—”

“I could not do such things with a pen!”

“Okay, try not to be so literal, okay? Imagine what the cavemen with their sticks and stones would've said a thousand years ago if they could see you write on parchment today. Now, are you going to freak out about
how
or are you going to get busy and
do
it?
”

The monk gave Ella's iPhone one more distrustful look and then picked up his pen.

After it was dark, Greta brought Ella a pan of fried potatoes. Ella was surprised at how hungry she was. She wolfed the food down but looked worriedly over Greta's shoulder at the open pasture.

“Should you have a fire?” she said. “The brothers all agree that Axel's men are looking for us everywhere.”

“The wind blows the other direction for now. I have allowed it,” Greta said.

Ella couldn't help but notice how wan and tired her friend looked. Ella hadn't take a moment to process the fact that Greta's convent was gone, her nuns, and her own capture and death likely imminent.

“How are you, Greta?”

Greta looked at her with surprise. “How am I?” She looked around at the motley bunch of exhausted, tired and fearful women, and the handful of nervous monks in the waning light of the day. “I am determined,” she said, “that we will not end like this.”

Ella took her hand and squeezed it. “Please, God,” she said.

R
owan watched
the rat at eye level. The rodent had probably had the satisfaction of Rowan's seemingly lifeless body to scamper upon for the last several hours and wasn't expecting the earth to move. When Rowan coughed, the animal twitched in his direction and fled the field. Rowan lay immobile, wondering what else had been done to him. He could tell by his muted cough that the blow to his head last night had deafened him at least temporarily.

When he realized he couldn't remember the trip to the castle, he figured he had been unconscious for at least part of it. As a result, he didn't know if he was being held in a complex series of underground chambers or a single cell. Because it was cold and damp and smelled like a grave, he decided he must be underground. If, by some miracle, he were to escape his cell, he had no idea which way led to the castle exterior.

Rowan took inventory of his condition. He could feel that several ribs were broken, that his nose was definitely broken, and that one eye was swollen completely shut. He had a cut on his lip, probably from when the gun smashed against his tooth. The cut was deep and still bleeding. His legs and arms were unbroken. The back of his left shoulder was on fire from last night's session with Axel.

God, he was a piece of work.

He shifted his weight and slowly stood. He wasn't pretty, but if he had to, he could still fight. He repositioned himself against the rough, damp wall of the chamber, feeling pain shoot up his legs and settle in his stomach. He could see that he'd already thrown up at least once.

Torture for the sake of torture. Rowan had known people like that. But he'd never been chained to a wall helpless when he'd met them. He was afraid to examine the wound on his back because his fingers were filthy. Like most sadists, Axel knew that the true value of torture lay in creating the anticipation of pain. It seemed to Rowan that Axel had held the white hot poker to Rowan's face for an hour as he taunted him in a language Rowan had no hope of understanding. When he finally put the brand to Rowan's shoulder, Rowan's first thought upon awakening was that as bad as it was it could have been a whole lot worse.

Today, while there was no outside light to mark the time of day, his eyesight adjusted to the gloom enough to see what his nose had told him last night. Two men shared his cell with him. Both dead, one badly decomposed. The rats had been active most of the night.

He remembered for a moment what Ella had said about deep emotion being the key to their time travel.
Could it work now?
Was there any way to escape this hell, his certain death? Was there any way to
will
himself to just reappear on the
Hauptstrasse
—through pure desire and extreme emotion—with a Pilsner and a dish of sushi on a sunlit table in front of him? He looked around the horror movie that had been his last six hours and felt fear and hopelessness flow over him. He closed his eyes and brought Ella's face to mind. Because as long as she was still here in this time, even if it meant he died in this Godforsaken place, this is where he would stay.

T
he next morning
, it rained—a cold rain that leached the sky of all color and washed the dirt from the streets into homes and shops. The outline of Heidelberg Castle stood ghostly and forbidding against the grey sky.

“How is it that it is spoken of in every public house in Heidelberg?” Krüger screeched as he pounded his hands in unrestrained fury atop the solid resistance of his desk.

Mayer, unmindful of the accompanying spittle that flecked across his face as his lord ranted, stood silently in front of the desk. He knew the question posed was not for answering.

“Where is Axel?” Krüger barked. “Where is the miscreant piece of lying filth I call my son?”

“He sleeps, my lord. He questioned the gardener until late last night and celebrated his victory in the arms of his whore—”

“Victory?! The nuns have all escaped! Is that not true?”

“For now, my lord,” Mayer said. “Your son expects to—”

“Silence!” Krüger raked the papers and books from his desk. “The fool has
boasted
of his intention to kill the King's man! Is he mad?! It is spoken of all over Heidelberg!” He picked up a heavy seal from his desk and threw it at Mayer who was wise enough not to dodge it. “Wake him and bring him to me at once!”

Mayer bowed, dripping blood from the wound on his face onto the ivory Isfahan carpet, and retreated to the hall. Outside, a footman stood holding a tray of correspondence. Mayer waved him away.

“His lordship is not in a mood to read mail,” he said. He wiped the blood on his face with his handkerchief and walked without hurry to the stairs.

E
lla stood
at the entrance to the cave and watched the rain. She was staring at the castle and trying to imagine what must be happening within.

Today was the day they will kill him.

Greta came up behind her. “All the letters have been delivered,” she said.

Ella tore her eyes from the castle and frowned at Greta. “Something should be happening by now,” Ella said.

“Perhaps it is,” Greta said, sitting on the ground at Ella's feet.

“How will we know?” Ella asked. “Will the brothers come back and report what's happening?”

Alice, who had been sitting nearby, was on her feet in an instant. “Let me go,” she said. “Let me go to the town and see. No one will suspect I am a novice.”

“No,” Greta said.

Ella looked from novice to Greta.

“No,” Greta said firmly to Ella.

“How will we know if it worked?” Ella asked. “How long should we wait? Do we just stay up here and if they catch us and kill us then we know we failed?”

“Ella,” Greta said gently, “the waiting is the hardest.”

“Let me ask you,” Ella said, squinting in the distance, “Would they still be building the pyre in the marketplace if our letters were working?”

Greta stood up and tried to see what Ella was seeing. “There is activity in the market square,” she said. “That is all.”

“It occurs to me,” Ella said to Greta, “that discrediting Axel or revealing Krüger as a traitor really has nothing to do with whether or not the good people of Heidelberg decide they want to burn someone they believe to be a warlock.”

Greta did not reply.

Ella turned on her heel and went into the cave. She grabbed her mailbag and cloak and headed down the mountain.

“Ella, no!” Greta called. “You can do nothing!”

“I've heard that before!” Ella called, then disappeared into the rain and the thick gathering fog.

“
I
told
no one about what we discussed!” Axel said hotly to his father. “I know nothing of any gossip in town. I spoke not a word!”

“Then how can it be that it is common knowledge in the streets of Heidelberg?” his father shouted. “You were the only one I told. If you didn't spread the gossip then you must have told someone who did!”

“I swear I did not!” Axel said. “But even if I had, so what? Who do we fear to punish us for whatever we may do?” Axel curled his lip at his father in a sneer. “You are afraid of gossip in the street, old man? You sound like Christof!”

His father swung a fist at Axel, who moved out of reach without effort and laughed.

“Your fears are the fears of an old woman who cries in the night,” Axel said, eyeing his father with disgust. “The servants tell me that you scream in your sleep.”

“You bastard!” his father screamed. “Get out! Get out of my sight!”

“Gladly,” Axel said, smiling. “I have a burning to attend. Before the warlock screams his last scorched breath, I'll have the rest of his whoring hags to throw on the fire with him.” As he left his father's office, he ran into a servant with the day's mail. Mockingly, Axel bowed low to the startled man, then turned on his heel and departed, his chuckles echoing down the stone hallway.

A
s Ella ran
through the streets of Heidelberg, she was careful to avoid going near the blackened ruins of the little convent. It wouldn't do to help people put two and two together, she thought. She knew she looked strange. She hadn't been able to bind her chest and had lost important buttons and snaps. She was falling out of her shirt and fought to keep the cloak wrapped around her. A shorn woman dressed in rags running through the street was an oddity. Everyone knew that nuns cut their hair. She would be suspicious for that reason alone.

As she alternately ran and slunk through the streets, watching the dark forbidding outline of Heidelberg Castle grow nearer, she was buoyed by the thought that she was getting closer to Rowan. She felt him pulling her, although she knew the last thing he would want would be for her to be anywhere near the castle.

When she finally got to the foot of the castle, she scanned the bushes at the entrance and decided she could hide herself well enough to see who was coming and going. If worse came to worse, she would be there when they took him to the market square. With only a Taser and a short handled knife that she'd scooped up during the attack, she might not be able to save either of them, but at least she would feel him in her arms one more time and see his dear face. And that was worth all of it to her.

R
owan crawled
his way back to consciousness with the aid of a plaintive howling in his ear. He gasped when he realized he could hear again and that the animal noises of screeching agony were not in the cell with him but somewhere else in the dungeon. He listened to the terrible sounds, rising and falling in an eerie cadence of anguish. He said a prayer for the poor wretch, whoever she was.

K
rüger stood
next to his man and nodded tersely. The man turned to the writhing woman manacled to the rack and eased the screw back a notch. She collapsed and sobbed in relief from the momentary absence of pain. Clutched in Krüger's hand was the letter Greta's monk had delivered not an hour earlier. Within minutes, he had the midwife rousted from her bed and brought to him, bewildered and terrified.

“I swear, lord, I heard your lady tell me with her own words,” the woman said, her eyes rolling in her head. “She told me Axel was someone else's. Only
Christof
was yours! I saw her as clearly as I'm seeing you right now!”

“If this is the truth,” Krüger said, mashing the letter in his fist and shaking it in her face, “why did you not come forward before now?”

The woman paused as if searching for words that would keep the pain away. “I didn't remember it as vividly in my mind before,” she said. “I saw her,” she mumbled, beginning to weep now. “I saw my lady.”

The torturer looked at Krüger. “My lord?”

Before Krüger could answer, Mayer arrived breathless on the stone landing.

“Sir,” he said, gasping for breath and looking at the poor woman strapped to the table before him. “The sheriff would like a word.”

G
reta was right
. The waiting was hell. Ella moved a few branches from her face and watched the stable boys move about the courtyard as they went through the motions of their work. She had one of the little shits in her crosshairs nearly from the moment she claimed her hiding place. She shifted a cramped leg.

No one had come out or gone in since she'd arrived. No magistrate. No sheriff. At this point, she was just waiting to see them bring Rowan out and head down the road to the waiting pyre in front of the
Church of the Holy Spirit
.

Should she go in? Even if she were to find the dungeons or wherever they were keeping him, she would surely lose any element of surprise in the process—not that it was going to be all that helpful with one Taser against a castle full of armed guards. Just as likely she would hasten the certainty that she died with him in the castle. On the other hand, she desperately needed Rowan to know that he wasn't alone, that she hadn't forgotten him, and that she wouldn't leave him. Knowing Rowan, that would comfort him not at all.

Was it possible the sheriff was already in the castle? What was taking so long?
And what was she hoping to see? Should she assume that Krüger and Axel had slithered out of the noose she and Greta had put together? Was it go-for-broke time?
Her finger itched on the trigger of her Taser. Her nonlethal weapon. A fleabite in the grand scheme of things. With no answers, no signs and no intuition to go on, she pulled the branches of the bushes aside and emerged.

K
rüger sat behind his desk
, his chin locked into place on his chest as if contemplating his vest. The sheriff of Heidelberg was a portly man with a disfiguring birthmark that traveled from the top of his bald head into the woolen collar of his shirt. He was flanked by four armed deputies.

“What evidence do you have for such a charge?” Krüger said. “I presume evidence is still required to prove one's guilt in Heidelberg?”

“We have the evidence of a rumor that spreads beyond the town walls.”

“A rumor.”

“It is my experience, Herr Krüger,” the sheriff said, “that where there is the smell of pudding burning, you will soon discover burnt pudding.”

“Well said,” Krüger said, “although I am reliably informed that a court of law still requires more than pudding to convict.”

“I would not be here if hearsay were my only evidence.”

Krüger jerked his chin off his chest. His beady eyes darted to Mayer who was steadfastly staring at the pattern on the carpet.

“What evidence?” he said, his voice full of scorn. He knew the sheriff loathed him although Krüger's absolute power and connection with the Prince had always made that irrelevant to him. In fact, Krüger had enjoyed poking the sharp stick of humiliation at the fat
Schwein
at every opportunity he could. And there had been many of those through the years.

The sheriff took a step toward the desk and, with a flourish and a smile, laid a document before Krüger on the desk.

“Herr Krüger,” he said, his voice formal but tinged with malice, “we have this document to support our assertion that you have conspired to murder Eric Reicher, the Prince's Catholic emissary to Heidelberg.”

The despot snatched up the paper. Horror crept into his features as he read.

“By your son's own admission,” the sheriff said, plucking the letter out of Krüger's unresisting fingers. “In his own hand. Boasting that he will be lord in your stead when you are put to death for your treasonous crimes against the crown. As you most certainly will be. Guards!”

Krüger stared at the beaming man, then turned to look at Mayer as if beseeching him to stop this nightmare. As the sheriff's men swarmed the desk to apprehend Krüger, Mayer stopped staring at the carpet just long enough to look up into his master's eyes. And smile.

E
lla knew exactly
where she was going. If Axel wasn't in the dungeons torturing Rowan, he would be in his room. Alone or not, it made no difference. Ella knew she couldn't kill him with the Taser, but she could at least disable him long enough to get the information she needed about where Rowan was. She felt in her pocket for the extra Taser barb. Her arm brushed past her unrestrained breasts beneath her loose top. Anyone who saw her now would know without a doubt that she was not a boy.

It no longer mattered.

Ella held her Taser in front of her, the nose pointed upward, her finger off the trigger so it didn't accidentally go off. She didn't feel nervous. She felt determined. Determined to find her husband. Determined not to let anything stand in her way. She bounded up the stairs and walked quickly to Axel's bedroom. She hesitated outside, listening for voices inside, then pushed the door open.

G
reta pulled
her shawl tightly around her shoulders and walked toward the castle. She had pulled off her wimple and allowed her long blonde hair to flow wildly about her shoulders. She knew she looked mad to anyone who saw her. But even though she was wearing black, at least she did not look like a nun. Today was a day for diversions and trickery, she thought. It did no good to play by the rules and die trying. There were too many people who depended on her to enjoy the luxury of fair play.

Before she reached the base of the castle, she heard the sound of many horses pounding the cobblestones behind her. She threw herself off the path and out of the way just in time. The riders came thundering into the castle courtyard. The Protestant magistrate Herr Schwartz and his men dismounted and tossed their reins to the stable boys.

Greta's heart surged into her chest.
They had come.
The letters had worked!

As she regained her footing on the path, she watched the five men push past the sentry guards and demand entrance into the castle.