Heidelberg Effect (31 page)

“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.

Ella 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.

As 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.

Rowan 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.

Krüger 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.”

Greta 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.

Krüger 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.

Ella 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.

Greta 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.

Ella stepped into the bedroom and was
immediately overcome with disappointment.

It was empty.

The arm holding the Taser sagged to her side
and her mind raced to think where else Axel might be. She knew she
had to hurry. The monk said Rowan was to die at noon. She turned to
exit the room.

There, standing between her and door, was
Axel.

She saw his smirk, his cold blue eyes and
the dark purple of his swollen lip telling her that Rowan had not
gone down easily. The thought of him galvanized her. She raised her
arm and pointed the Taser at Axel.

“It’s you!” he said, his lips pulled back
from his teeth in a snarl of delight.

Without speaking a word, she fired at
him.

And missed.

Aghast, she turned to flee into the interior
of the bedroom but he was on her before she could take a step. He
tackled her and threw her face down onto the stone floor. Her Taser
flew out of her hand and skidded under the bed as she fell. For a
moment, Axel was lying on top of her and she could feel his
hardened member press against her back. Effortlessly, he flipped
her over and pinned her beneath him on the floor.