Heidelberg Effect (9 page)

“She never got over it,” her father said.
“Her shame touched every part of her life. Every part of my life,
too, frankly.”

“Well, it
is
pretty horrible. It
explains a lot about her, though.”

“Exactly. You can see how devastated she was
when she found out she was pregnant with you,” her father said.
“She kept going on and on about how it was the worst thing to
happen to her.”

Ella stopped walking and listened to his
words fall on her like rocks breaking against the pavement.

“When she was pregnant?” Ella said.

“It was everything I could do to prevent her
from…you know…aborting it.”

“By
it
, you mean me.”

“Well, we didn’t know it
was
you
at the
time, did we? At the time, it was just your mother thinking she was
passing on the bad seed. I told her how unlikely that would be. And
look how you turned out. But still, she never forgave
me.”

“She never forgave you for allowing me to
live.”

“Don’t put it like that, Ella. Susie told me
I shouldn’t tell you but I said you’d be able to see the big
picture on this.”

“She didn’t want me.”

“She was
afraid
, Ella. Her whole
life—her whole self-concept—was wrapped up in
him
and redeeming herself because of
him. Continuing his bloodline was obviously not something she
wanted to do.”

At least that explained why Ella saw so
little of her mother growing up. Why she had no memory of hugs or
kisses or even smiles. For a moment, Ella didn’t care if she walked
in front of one of the many city trams rushing by her.

“Ella? You still there? Was Susie right?
Should I have kept my mouth shut? It’s just that, now that you know
about Vogel, I figured you’d put the rest of it together on your
own. And you always were so wanted and loved.”

Just not by my mother.

“I’ll be home as soon as I can get a flight
out,” she said dully.

“I feel like I’ve upset you, Ella. That’s
the last thing I wanted to do.”

“Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’ll call you when
I’m back in the States.”

She disconnected.

The fairytale of the loving
mother so busy making the country safe for everyone that she had no
time for her own little girl faded to dust as Ella stood on the
dark Heidelberg street. Her mother hadn’t
wanted
to have time for her own
little girl. What she wanted was for her own little girl to never
have been born.

She hadn’t noticed when it
had started to rain but the puddles were forming in the uneven
walkway and, looking down, she saw that her shoes were already wet.
She turned her phone off and put it in her shoulder bag and let the
rain fall on her. She kept walking. The street was now deserted but
she didn’t care. She could see that she had already walked a mile
or so toward the
Altstadt
. She hesitated a moment to
reorient herself. The last thing she wanted was to meet someone she
knew.

Ella turned and went down a
narrow alley, mindless of the flashes of lightning and the icy
needles of rain punishing her. She didn’t know where she was going,
she just felt like she had to be gone from where she was. Had her
mother
ever
looked at her with affection or longing? She paused at the
end of mews and looked up at the dark sky.

She clutched her bag slung crosswise on her
chest and pulled her jacket tighter around her. The temperature had
dropped significantly and she was shaking with the cold. Her hair
was wet and plastered to her neck. Her jeans stuck to her, weighing
her down. She rested against the ancient brick wall lining the
alley and pulled her jacket collar up to deflect the stream of cold
rain trickling down her neck. She left the alley and crossed the
street—she didn’t know which one—to another alley, more narrow than
the first but allowing more protection from the rain and wind.

She tried to galvanize her brain to think as
she forced her legs to move.

Her mother had wanted to abort the baby. Her
mother did not want to be pregnant. Ella tried to imagine her
mother, pregnant, big, full and hating it.

Hating me.

She walked out of the alleyway but wasn’t
sure where she was. Her landmarks were distorted in the rain. All
the buildings began to resemble each other.

This whole stupid trip to
Heidelberg had been a massive mistake on every level. She hated her
work, she hated her whole career. She had thrown away a promising
relationship, the first one in
years
.

She stopped walking and
closed her eyes momentarily. She willed herself to tune out the
world and try to shut everything out. When she opened her eyes, she
saw the gray hulking form of the
Church of
the Holy Spirit
. She was surprised to find
herself so close to the Old Market. When she saw the church, she
realized that this is where she had been coming all along. Careful
not to fall on the wet cobblestones, she ran across the empty road,
pulled open the heavy double wooden doors and slipped inside the
church.

She found a darkened pew and sat down,
closing her eyes and listening to the shuffling sounds of the
city’s homeless with whom she shared the back of the church. The
pounding rain outside seemed to make the ancient church ceiling
hum. Through the stained glass windows, lightning illuminated the
sanctuary with bright flashes. She was soaked through and shivered
in the cold stone church.

Her father couldn’t help
her. He couldn’t even help himself and he certainly never helped
her mother. Thinking of her father sent a wash of hopelessness
through Ella.
Who else was there?
She fell asleep sitting up.

She awoke to the sound of thunder echoing
through the chambers of the big cathedral. For one mad moment, Ella
thought the church was being bombed. She looked around and saw that
she was totally alone.

Am I making this worse than
it is?
she wondered.
My mother’s secret is now mine. When I go home nobody will
even know.

Except I will know.

She ran a hand through her
hair and looked around the empty church.
Am I here for sanctuary? Or for absolution?
She looked at the vacant altar. She was not a
churchgoer back in the States. She didn’t know why she had been
drawn to the church tonight.

Her nap seemed to have helped. She felt
calmer. Her clothes were still wet and she could still see and hear
the storm outside. She recognized that she felt an instinctive urge
not to return to her apartment. But she also knew she needed to go
back. Her mind raced with the preparations she would need to make
to book her return flight and pack up. Just the thought of it felt
like more than she could deal with.

She stood up and walked to the main entrance
at the rear of the church, her clothes chafing at her cold skin as
she moved. As she stepped outside, the rain was pouring down,
making the dark cobblestones look like black mirrors. A wave of
despair swept over her. Her arms and legs were cramped from
sleeping on the hard wooden pew. She felt sick to her stomach.

Inexplicably, she knew she
had to
move
.
Without thinking, she bolted into the exposed courtyard in front of
the church and headed for the first alley she came to. All at once,
the narrow darkened path became brilliantly illuminated by a
shocking flash of light followed by a crash of thunder as loud as
cannon fire. Ella screamed and edged past the smoking trunk of the
tree the lightning had struck. When she emerged from the alley, she
saw a scene of devastation—kiosk carts, store awnings and shop
signs had been destroyed in the storm.

It was madness to be out in
this. She turned to run back to the church.
How had the storm built so quickly?
The alley ended but, instead of leading to the church, it
opened to a narrow cobblestone road leading to Heidelberg Castle.
She looked up and saw the ruins of the castle in silhouette looming
over her. The lightning was flashing through and over the windows,
like explosions over a battlefield.

As she stepped into the street, the blowing
rain stung her cheeks as she felt hopelessness wash over her. The
betrayals, the lost love, the missed chances, the lost mother, her
own refusal to see the truth in front of her. She sank to her knees
on the cobblestones in exhaustion and defeat and reached up to her
throat to grasp the opal necklace that had once belonged to her
mother. As soon as she touched it, she was overwhelmed by an acute
nausea that spread upward until she thought her head would explode.
She no longer felt the rain or the cold or the fact that she was on
her knees on the hard cobblestones in the street. She closed her
eyes and felt like she was falling. The sound of the rain and the
thunder was muted and then disappeared altogether.

When she forced herself to open her eyes,
she was still on her knees, only now she was kneeling in front of
an ancient moss-covered wall. It was still raining, but not hard.
She felt a strong urge to get up and hide herself. Her stomach was
cramping and seizing and she had to grab for the stonewall to keep
from falling over.

And she was no longer alone.

She heard people coming down the narrow road
from the castle but she was powerless to get off her knees to avoid
them. She watched them come, slowly at first, and then more quickly
as they spotted her kneeling there.

Suddenly, rough hands grabbed her by the
shoulders and her nose was assaulted by a terrible smell. A large
man gripped her tightly. He was dressed in rags. Looking past him
and his companion, she struggled to understand why they had donkeys
with them. Were they homeless? She tried to stand but she was too
weak. The man holding her peered into her face and then scooped her
up and threw her over his shoulder. Before she passed out she heard
him speak to his companion in what sounded like German but not like
German at all.

Chapter Six

Greta Schaefer stood in the late afternoon
sun and tried to focus her mind on the dappled effect of light
against the castle walls. It was an unsuccessful attempt to
distract herself from what the man was doing to her body.

Two men held her but they needn’t have
bothered. She would not have resisted them as their leader pressed
into her body as close as a lover. He was bent over his work and
she could smell the soap he used to bathe with, allowing herself a
moment of surprise to realize that, regardless of how close it was
or wasn’t to godliness, even devils often like to be clean.

“Hold the bitch still,” he snarled. “She
keeps flinching.”

“We can make her
real
still, my lord,”
said one of the men holding her. The other man laughed. “Just say
the word.”

“All in due time,” their leader said.

Perhaps someone was bathing, Greta thought,
staring at the fortress walls, her arm screaming in fiery pain, or
it might be washday. She stood between the two men who were
supporting her. Facing her, his head so close to her breast that it
might be resting on it, was Axel Krüger, eldest son to the warlord
Krüger of Heidelberg. He gripped her right arm, the sleeve of her
nun’s habit raked up past her elbow, the inside of her forearm in
his hands. She dared not look at what he was doing just as she
dared not look at the sobbing novice being held by another man on
horseback directly in her line of vision.

“So there will be no
mistake, Mother,” Axel said to her holding his knife up in front of
her face. “So you will know precisely
when
I return for you and the rest
of your mewling harpies, I make you a notation that you may carry
with you.”

Greta allowed herself to look into his eyes
and there she saw such depths of hatred and guilt that she was able
to gain enough strength to endure what would come. The novice
screamed and again Greta forced herself not to look. She could do
nothing to help the child. Axel demanded her attention by touching
the point of his blade to the tenderest, most vulnerable part of
her arm to finish what he had begun.

He sliced a slow, curving arc into her arm
but his eyes never left hers. She knew he was looking to see her
weakness, her pain, her terror. She knew that if he didn’t get it,
he would go further. As far as he needed to go. The pain blossomed
from her arm and radiated up to her throat and shoulders, shooting
outward like fireworks of agony. She could not disguise her
reaction. She moaned.

“It’s a crescent moon, you see,” Axel said,
holding up her bloodied arm so she might see his handiwork. “I will
return for you and the others when the moon is no longer full.”

She returned his gaze but said nothing. She
watched him give the signal to his men to mount up and they let her
drop silently to her knees on the rough stones of the alley, her
arm bleeding freely down the front of her dress. She watched Axel
mount his horse. She looked at the whimpering novice who was held
in front of one rider. The man holding the novice had one hand on
the reins of his horse and the other clutching the girl’s breast
through her habit. The girl looked at Greta with terror and
pleading in her eyes before her horse turned down the road toward
the castle.

Greta sat in the cold alley, pressing her
arm to her chest to staunch the blood. She looked in the direction
they had gone. She bowed her head to blot out the sounds of the
child’s sobs until she realized they were her own.