Heidelberg Effect (30 page)

“Wechet ihn
auf
!” Axel was screaming.
“
Wechet ihn auf
!”

Within seconds someone threw water in
Rowan’s face. He woke up and realized his nose was broken. He was
pressed firmly against the wall. Axel stood beside him and looked
into his face. He was smiling, and in his hand, held so that Rowan
could see, was the fiery branding iron.

“Oh gut, sie leben
noch
,” he said. “
Meine Frage ist: Wo sind die Nonnen
?”

Rowan licked his lips. He was pretty sure he
didn’t have enough saliva left to spit in the face of this
bastard.

“Ja
?” Axel said. “
Ich Weiss dass Sie
können mich verstehen. Wo sind die Nonnen
?”

“It may not be the answer you’re hoping
for,” Rowan said, his voice just a whisper.

Axel frowned and brought
his face nose to nose with Rowan’s. “
Was
?”

“But, go fuck yourself.” As soon as he saw
the confusion on Axel’s face at the unfamiliar language, Rowan
smashed his head into Axel’s mouth. Axel dropped the hot poker and
put both hands to his face. Blood immediately spouted between his
fingers.

“Verbrennet
ihn
!” he screamed.

All three men grabbed Rowan and pinned him
again with his face to the wall. He saw one of them pick up the
fiery poker.

He closed his eyes.
I love you, Ella
, he
thought fervently.
I love you,
girl
.

When the brand touched his left shoulder, he
smelled burning flesh before he registered the pain. Then the agony
in his shoulder exploded in a vortex of intense sensation that
emanated in all directions at once. So invasive and complete was
the severity of the pain that it screamed through every part of his
body. With Ella’s name still on his lips and in his mind, Rowan
fainted.

Chapter Nineteen

Ella 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.”

The 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.

Rowan 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.

Chapter Twenty

The 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.