Once Upon a Crime (28 page)

He scuttled off to do as he was told. Or at least he would have, had not the giant spotted him. Clearly unable to differentiate between his attackers and a hapless bystander, the giant bounded forward and snatched Hans up, raising him high into the air, roaring in fury as he did so.

Hans screamed. Gretel screamed.

The giant heard Gretel and looked up. Spotting her on the ledge, he flung Hans aside and began to stride toward where Gretel was perched.

Gretel felt her mouth go dry. She saw Hans freeze, mouth agape, incapable of either fight or flight. The giant lumbered toward her, great arms outstretched, colossal hands preparing to pluck her from the ledge and crush her in his rage. It did seem, at that moment, that it might be all up for Gretel,
that
Gretel, of Gesternstadt. She took a shaky breath, aware that her brother was watching, not wanting him to witness her terror.

If anyone had ever asked Gretel for her opinions of cats, they would have received a stream of invective, denouncing the creatures as sly, devious, and not to be trusted. From her position on the cave wall, watching her nemesis approach, knowing that it was cats that had brought her to this place, she might have added one or two more pithy criticisms of all things feline. However, the events of the next few moments were to change her view of the furry critters forever.

Just as the giant came within grasping distance of her, a great caterwauling, a wailing, a hissing, and a yowling echoed out of the cave entrance. The giant paused and turned in time to see a flood of cats pouring from the hole in the mountainside, scattering in each and every direction, flinging themselves over boulders, past bodies, and off and away as fast as ever their little feet would carry them.

The giant let out a great cry of anguish.

“No! No, my beautieth! Come back!” he wailed. His murderous intentions toward Gretel forgotten in an instant, he rushed toward the fleeing moggies, clutching and snatching at them, desperation clear in his every movement and expression.

Gretel felt her heartbeats slow back to a level that suggested she might, after all, live a while longer. Shaking from her mind her surprise at the giant's apparently genuine affection for the cats, she scanned the scene for Hans. He was still lying on the stony ground, shocked into immobility.

“Hans!” she cried. “Hans, fetch the cart!”

He shook his head, staggering to his feet, and sprinted away showing a surprising turn of speed. Gretel attempted to edge farther along, and therefore down, the ledge, eager to decrease the height of the jump she was going to have to make. Even so, when Hans did eventually succeed in positioning the mare
and the trap beneath her, it was clearly too risky to simply drop down into it.

“Gretel!” Hans struggled to hold his own nerve and that of the horse, which was not at all happy about being maneuvered into the thick of the fray. The giant was still lurching after the cats, which darted this way and that in search of hiding places or escape in their panic, pausing only to flatten any of Inge's men who dared to come within reach. Suddenly, Inge herself reappeared, charging out through the doorway, blunderbuss in hand, followed by several of her accomplices, who stumbled beneath the weight of chests and trunks full of the giant's treasure. Seeing a conveyance so helpfully close at hand she hurried toward it, but the giant screamed at her.

“You! Thith ith your doing, you wicked wretch!” he yelled.

Inge hesitated, turned, took a stick of dynamite from her skirts, lit it, and lobbed it at the giant. He roared, flinging himself to one side in an effort to avoid the worst of the blast.

The explosion, when it came, was too much for the bay mare. She threw up her head and bolted, leaping into a gallop with such suddenness that Hans fell backward into the cart, the reins pulled from his hands as the horse careered through Inge's men, living and dead, charged past the prone and groaning giant, and disappeared down the mountain trail. The force of the blast, coupled with the increasingly terrifying sequence of events, caused Gretel to lose her footing. She shrieked as her feet slipped and she felt herself plunging down the sheer rock face, the unyielding stone ground rushing up to meet her. She closed her eyes, bracing herself for an impact that didn't come. Instead she felt a fierce jolt, and then nothing. Opening her eyes, she saw that her cape had lifted as she fell, and that
the red peasant's pinafore she had donned before leaving the inn had opened as she dropped and snagged on one of the elaborate gargoyles above the entrance. Now she dangled, unable to go either up or down, swinging slowly from side to side. From the canvas bag Mippin set up a nervous meowing.

Inge looked up at Gretel and smiled. It was not a nice smile. Slowly, carefully, almost as if she was enjoying the moment, she raised her gun to her shoulder and took aim.

THIRTEEN

G
retel felt more than a little cross with herself. She had been in some narrow scrapes recently, and many of them had involved no small degree of embarrassment and humiliation. There were, of course, dangers that went with her chosen profession, and these she accepted. What rankled, however, what was currently causing her to grind her teeth and utter silent oaths, was the undignified manner in which she seemed destined to depart this world and enter the next. For a start, there were her clothes.

True, her underwear was of good quality. And her own dress and cape, while not at the cutting edge of the fashion of the day, were well tailored and of respectable provenance. The red
pinafore was a different matter entirely, and had no doubt come from some haggard creature who had toiled her life away in a field somewhere. Gretel could still smell the turnips. The furry boots were abominable and made her feet look several sizes larger than they really were. And the hat. The dreadful fur of some low-living vermin, at best Russian polecat, or quite possibly Mongolian rat, made her look like something in disguise. Even now it was slipping ever further down over her eyes, giving her a pitifully dim-witted appearance. She was too intent on clutching tight to the bag containing Mippin to risk taking the loathsome thing off and flinging it at her would-be murderer.

And then there was the dangling. Snagged and hanging, slowly swinging, she was unable to protect herself or improve her circumstances in any way. And to cap it all, she was to be dispatched by the vile and amoral Inge Peterson. Gretel felt fury rising within her and marshaled it, determined not to let her soon-to-be murderess detect just how utterly beaten she felt.

“I see you have got what you came for,” she called down to Inge.

“And more besides.” She laughed up at Gretel, enjoying her discomfort. “You don't look so high and mighty now, Fraulein Detective. What, no clever remarks? Proper betwattled, you are! No judgments to make on a poor trug like me? Me being the one holding the gun that is pointing at you, mind.”

“There is no harsher judge of a person than one's own conscience, I believe.”

“A pox on conscience! Yours, mine, or any cully else's. A body does what a body needs to do to survive in this world, no more, no less. The strong takes from the weak, the clever from the jolter heads.” She raised her gun higher, putting her eye to the sights.

Gretel didn't have to bother closing her eyes, as her hat finally descended sufficiently to entirely obscure her vision. This being the case, she had only a confusion of sounds to tell her what was happening.

There was first a swift whooshing noise, followed by a woman's cry, and the sound of a large gun being fired. Shot blasted into the stone beside Gretel, but none struck her. After an in-breath of silence, the hordes of Hades appeared to be let loose, such was the volume of chaotic cries, shouting and bellowing. Voices came from all sides, as below her a battle raged, between whom she could not tell. Muskets fired. Swords clashed upon swords. Men yelled and shrieked as targets were missed or found. The fighting continued at a fever pitch for what seemed to Gretel to be hours, but was more likely only a matter of some minutes. At last, calm returned, the sounds of the struggle ceased, and orders were given by unseen soldiers to stand down.

Desperate to know what was going on and whether or not she was still in peril, Gretel struggled to reach up and push the wretched headgear from her eyes. When she did so, the first thing she saw, smiling up at her, was the almost irritatingly handsome face of Uber General Ferdinand von Ferdinand. Behind him his men tended the wounded, secured prisoners, and helped to right the toppled giant. Inge, an arrow in her shoulder, had her feet and hands bound before being carried away. Gretel instinctively pulled in her stomach and lifted her chin. The felt of her pinafore had stretched under her weight, so that she now twisted as she dangled, spinning slowly and solemnly beneath the grinning gargoyle.

“Good morning, Fraulein Gretel.” The general was unable to keep the laughter out of his voice. “I am pleased to find you unharmed.”

“Nothing damaged except my pride,” she assured him.

She noticed Roland among the troops and felt a tiny twinge of admiration for the young man, who had risen to the challenge and successfully completed his difficult mission. This was swiftly followed by a slightly bigger twinge of self-satisfaction, as she realized that, ultimately, it was because of her that General von Ferdinand had summoned his men, left his duties at the Schloss, ridden hell-for-leather for many leagues, and battled with a dangerous band of brigands in order to rescue her.

Gretel wasn't one to read things into things, but she couldn't help feeling such effort must surely denote a certain amount of keenness for her on the general's part.

“How fortunate for you,” Ferdinand called up, “that my men and I were on maneuvers in the area.”

“Ah. Fortunate indeed,” said Gretel, somewhat crestfallen.

“And more fortunate still that we happened upon young Roland Hund, a mile or so from an inn, lying in a ditch where he had been thrown from his horse.”

“Ah. Indeed,” said Gretel, her crest falling further.

“And such amazing good fortune continued to send us here at the very moment you were about to be shot, enabling us to capture the nefarious Inge Peterson in the act of one of her misdeeds, while almost inadvertently saving your life.”

“Again, ah,” said Gretel, crest now completely flattened.

The giant dusted himself off and set about catching any cats that were still within reach.

“Help me, oh pleathe!” he begged the soldiers. “Help me find my darlingth!”

“Your darlingth?” Gretel asked.

The giant, pulling himself up to his full height, was at least able to look Gretel in the eye as he spoke.

“Oh yeth, they are my tholace, my greatetht joy in life.”

“But I thought, I mean, I'd heard . . .”

The giant shook his great head.

“I admit it, I did a terrible thing. When firtht I thought out the wonderful creatureth, it wath for an entirely different reathon. There were thome whothe liveth were taken for thuch thilly, thallow endth. But I was dethperate, I was obthethed, in love to the point of madneth. I would have done anything to keep that love.”

“Johanna?”

He nodded. “But it wath not to be. You cannot win a heart with treathureth, however prethiouth they might be.” He stooped to pick up a small black cat, tenderly cradled it, cooed at it softly. When he looked at Gretel again there were tears in his eyes. “You thee,” he said, “I found love in the motht unexthpected of platheth. The tiny creatureth have thown me how to truly open my heart, to thomething fragile and beautiful, and tho affecthionate.” He held the slightly nervous cat high. “Look,” he said, “who could look upon thuch a dear thing and not feel moved?”

It was at this point that Gretel remembered her own precious cargo. She stuffed her hand into the canvas bag.

“Mippin? Are you still with us?”

There was a purr and a meow that suggested he was. Relieved, Gretel called down to General von Ferdinand.

“If you would be so kind,” she said, “I would very much like to come down from here.”

He smiled up at her. “But of course, fraulein.”

He signaled to his sergeant and a wagon was brought, and men instructed to assist Gretel in her descent. At last she came to stand on firm ground once more. She straightened her hat, dusted down her clothes, and adopted a brisk and confident manner in the hope it might make her feel better, even if it fooled no one.

“So, Herr General, a good day for you, is it not? An infamous criminal in your custody, caught in the very act of attempting
murder. Herr Giant's fortune and safety restored. And, crucially, your worries concerning Princess Charlotte at an end.”

“Really? Can we be certain of this?”

“Oh, I think so. Excuse me just one moment, please.” She beckoned Roland and then led him to a quiet corner.

“Fraulein Gretel, I am so relieved to see you well. When I was thrown from that wild horse I feared—”

“Yes, yes, never mind that now. All's well that ends well, etcetera, etcetera. But you haven't quite completed all that is required of you.”

“I have not?”

“It is vital—well, vital for me, at any rate—that you convince the general that you have no romantic intentions toward Princess Charlotte, and that you will never so much as attempt to contact her again.” Gretel had to be certain she could convince all and everyone that she had saved the royal family from the embarrassment of having a peasant make off with one of their princesses. Her liberty, and quite possibly her life, depended upon it.

“But, fraulein, my circumstances are unchanged. I still find myself in no position to spurn the princess. You know the condition of my family's fortune . . .”

“Fortune,” said Gretel, undoing the pearl necklace and slipping it from her throat, “favors the brave.” She took his hand and placed the pearls in his palm, quelling a reflex that would ordinarily cause her fingers to clutch at such fabulous jewels. Giving them up was no easy thing for her.