Swept Away (18 page)

Rowan said nothing.

“You're pouting.”

“Don't be ridiculous. If you say nothing happened, I believe you. Besides, we didn't have an understanding or anything. You were free to do as you like.”

“Exactly. It was precisely
because
I was free to do as I like,” Ella said, “that I was able to realize that I didn't want to be with anyone but you. Satisfied?”

He did not respond but she could tell he was pleased.

“And yourself?” she said. “Were you a little angel when all communications ceased?”

“I was, actually,” Rowan said. “I came close one time but, in the end, my heart wasn't in it.”

Ella sat down next to him. “If I've learned anything from all this,” she said, “I've learned that
that
is what it all comes down to.”

Rowan looked at her. A smile edged at his lips.

“Not only does your heart know,” she continued, “but sometimes it knows before you do.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said, leaning over to kiss her. “I always knew.”

T
hat night
, Rowan was particularly gentle with Ella to the point where she complained.

“I don't want to hurt you,” he insisted.

“I want to feel like I'm being kissed, Rowan,” she said. “Even if it hurts.”

“I hate you having to go back there tomorrow.”

“I know. And I hate the idea of you setting off a damn bomb.”

“These monks that Greta is having write the anonymous letter to the Protestant Magistrate…she trusts them?”

“Jeez, Rowan, they're
monks
.”

“What, you never heard of double-dealing, low-down monks before? Won't they wonder why she's asking them to set up Axel?”

“She has a relationship with them. Besides, they hate Axel. He destroyed their monastery.”

They were quiet for a moment, both lost in their own thoughts.

Ella laughed. “Can you even believe we're doing any of this?”

He kissed her tenderly. “I can hardly believe we're together,” he said.

“I never should have taken the job in Germany.”

“Guess you felt like you had to.”

“It was so stupid. What I can't believe is I got a second chance with you.”

“Are you kidding?” He pulled her close to him and tucked her against his chest. “There was no way I was letting you go.”

Before they drifted off to sleep, Rowan murmured to her, his eyes closed: “What did you tell Greta to put in the letter?”

“The usual,” Ella yawned. “That he drinks human blood and can make fire come out his fingers.”

“That's good. G'nite, beautiful.”

Ella was up early the next morning. She was too nervous to eat much breakfast but stuffed a heel of bread in the baggy pocket of her raggedy pants. It was still dark out when she stole out of the convent and walked down the lane leading to the
Altstadt
on the way to the castle. She and Rowan had said their goodbyes from the confines of their narrow bed. But because Rowan was clearly building up a head of steam fretting, she left while he was in the garden relieving himself. She knew he'd be furious, but there didn't seem to be any point in delaying and all his worry and urgings and
be safes
were just making her more nervous. They'd gone over it a hundred times. There was nothing else to gain by drawing out the departure.

Greta was up and Ella gave her a quick wave before shutting the door to the kitchen. Greta's job today was less dangerous but no less important. She had to set the monks to recreating Axel's birth certificate.

Rowan's job was to avoid attention while setting the explosive charge under the drawbridge of the castle. The explosion needed to be big enough to cause chaos within the castle, but not so big that Rowan himself was captured or, God forbid, blown up in the process.

As she walked, Ella put thoughts of Rowan and Greta aside. There was no point in worrying about their days. She had all she could handle with her own monumental task. Even with the evidence written in bruises on her face, Ella hadn't told Rowan and Greta the whole truth about yesterday in the castle. She had been beaten almost as soon as she set foot in the stable. The other stable boys regarded her as an interloper. And because she was mute, they saw her as a natural victim.

God, this place is fucked up,
Ella found herself thinking. After nodding at the guards standing at the base of the castle gate, she trotted to the darkened stable yard in the forecourt of the castle. She snuck into the first stall. The boys were sleeping on the floor like a litter of puppies. The straw was filthy and so were they. Ella held her nose and stepped quietly around them.

When she reached the other side of the stall, she sat down to wait for them to wake up. As soon as she heard the stable master moving about the stable, she stood up and kicked one of the nearest boys.

She hoped Rowan would be able to set the charge early according to plan. She was aching to get into the castle. She felt for the cellphone in her inside trouser pocket.

“What're you lookin' at, pisser?” One of the boys snarled at her and she fought to keep her face impassive as visions of five minutes with him and her Taser passed through her mind.

The stable master appeared in the doorway. He was large and ruddy with short legs, a barrel chest and a bull neck. He had a cruel look in his eye and a scar that ran the length of his face from his eyebrow to his jawline. From the way he treated the boys, Ella was pretty sure he was a card-carrying pederast. She could not imagine how he ended up working with horses unless torturing smaller animals had become boring for him. He caught her eye and smiled his toothless, wicked smile like he wanted to eat her for breakfast.

Come on, Rowan, blow something up any time now…

The stable master beckoned to her with a fat curled finger and she pushed off the wooden stall wall toward him. When she got to him, he smashed her hard in the stomach with the wooden bucket he had been holding behind his back. The other boys instantly began to laugh.

In the process of trying to protect herself from the bucket, Ella smashed one of her fingers. She succeeded in not falling down, which she had a feeling would not have ended well for her. Her finger throbbed painfully as she clutched the heavy bucket and prayed the finger wasn't broken.

“Fill it,” he said, “and get ‘em watered.” Then he turned from her and focused on the other boys. Ella bolted from the stall as soon as the man shifted his bulk enough to allow her to squeeze past. She could barely lift the bucket empty and had no idea how she was going to manage it full of water. But she decided to take her problems one step at a time. Getting away from the stable master seemed a top priority at the moment.

Once out of the stall, Ella looked around to see what might be the best way to get inside the castle. The stalls lined a small courtyard which faced a broad cobblestone walkway that wound up the hill to the castle. She had no idea where Axel or Krüger's rooms were. But it was a safe bet they weren't on the ground floor or within easy running distance from the stables. She looked toward town to see if she could possibly see Rowan but she realized it wouldn't bode well if she could. She walked over to the water trough to fill the bucket. She could hear the horses nicker in their stalls, the same stalls she would be clearing out before the day was done with her bare hands if, like yesterday, the other boys commandeered all the shovels and pitchforks. By the time the boys emerged from the stall, she had succeeded in filling the bucket. Even though she was taller than any of them, she feared them. They were rough and hard. They reminded her of Fagin's gang: poor, cunning and desperate. She learned that the stupid ones were the most dangerous. But all the boys were to be avoided.

With a strength she didn't know she possessed, Ella filled and dragged the heavy water bucket to the horses. She filled each of their ten water reservoirs. When she finished, it probably wasn't eight in the morning yet but she was already so tired she could barely walk. Her arms trembled as she set the empty bucket down in the dirt with a heavy thud. Like her, the other boys had been too busy to pay attention to anything other than the chore in front of them. Now, she looked around to see where they were. The stable master was not visible, but that didn't mean he wasn't there watching her.

She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. Now what? The last thing she wanted to do was ask for instructions. But she didn't want to be caught doing nothing either.
Why hadn't the charge gone off?
Had Rowan been caught?
She looked at the open bloody blisters on her hands and was in the process of turning toward the main stable to find the stable master when the first blast sounded in the distance.

When it finally happened, a combination of exhaustion and heightened anticipation momentarily immobilized her. As soon as the other boys dropped their tools and began to run around the courtyard, Ella headed for the side of the barn as she had planned to do all morning. She ran up the winding stone pathway. A man with wild eyes came toward her from the castle but ran past without a glance. She looked over her shoulder to see that pandemonium had broken out in the stables. One of the boys, presumably trying to save the horses, had opened the stalls doors. A dozen horses were charging around the courtyard screaming, the whites of their eyes showing in their panic.

Ella entered the castle. In her experience, even if a person didn't look like they belonged, if they acted with conviction and purpose, people tended to accept their presence as reasonable. Once inside, she could see that the main hall was straight ahead, the dining hall to the left, and the long stone stairway to the upper rooms on her right. The narrow steps were steep and slick with years of wear. Angry voices and panicked cries came from the main hall. She hesitated. She wasn't sure she had allowed enough time for the upstairs to vacate and she sure as hell didn't want to meet anyone on her way up.

She slid behind a ten-foot tall stone vase at the base of the stairs and watched the activity for a moment. Five people came down—mostly servants and a few wealthy landowner types—and ran out the door. When the hall was clear, she moved quickly up the steps, taking them two at a time. She slipped but caught herself on the last step. She was breathing heavily from the climb and her own fear. She stopped to listen for anyone in the hall. Deciding it was now or never, she ran past a set of open doors toward the far end of the hall, where she expected to find Küger's room. Most of the doors were open and she looked in them as she ran, praying no one was inside to see her.

The second explosion went off as she was halfway down the hall. She felt a thrill of delight fighting with her fear as she thought of Rowan planting
two
bombs in order to make things interesting. At the hall's end, she stood panting in front of the massive double wooden doors of the private chamber of the master of Heidelberg. She put her hands against the right side door and gently pushed it open. As she did, she noticed her hands were shaking.

The room was anchored by an enormous four-poster bed, its canopy draped with enough canvas to rig a large sailboat. Pausing only long enough to confirm that the room was vacant, she ran to the bedside table on which were several ale mugs, a sheathed boot knife, and two candles in holders. She was sure this was Axel's room. It was a young man's room. A warrior's lair. She rummaged in the pocket of her trousers and pulled out Rowan's Bic lighter. She wrenched open the wooden drawer on the bedside table and with trembling fingers shoved the lighter to the furthest corner—exactly where the letter to the Magistrate said it could be found. She looked around the room until she saw a door leading to an anteroom. She pushed open the door to reveal a larger, more ornate room in which sat the biggest desk she had ever seen.

Was this Axel's den or his father's?
She hesitated and stepped back into the bedroom. She realized she didn't have time to go looking for another office.

She entered the office and went straight to the desk, fumbling to turn on her cellphone as she went. It didn't matter which papers she photographed. She just needed Axel or Krüger's signature. Quickly, she sifted through the papers on the desk but found nothing signed. She yanked open the top drawer and pulled a large sheaf of papers onto the desktop. She instantly found what she needed. She positioned the cellphone and snapped a picture of Krüger's signature and another of Axel's. She found a letter from some guy whose name she didn't recognize. She photographed that too.

Through the window behind the desk, she could see smoke curling up in the distance. People were running everywhere and now she could see that several small fires had broken out by the castle wall.
Good going, Rowan
, she thought. Then she retraced her steps down the stairs. As she passed a stairwell window, she noticed that people were beginning to make their way back to the castle.

At the bottom of the stairs, she froze. Standing there, and blocking her way was one of the two young lords of the castle. He stood with his back to her, his arm on the shoulder of a servant. Ella took in a sharp breath and began to tiptoe behind him. The servant noticed Ella's movement, and when he turned to look at her, the young Krüger turned around too.

It was Christof. Although she had never seen him before, she was sure it was him. His hair was as blond as Hugo's was back in 2012 Heidelberg. He had the same ideal Arian looks. When he saw her, a puzzled expression came to his face.

But he smiled. He gave the servant a reassuring pat and spoke to Ella, kindly but quickly in the local German she didn't understand. She turned and ran down the main hall and out the door, where she easily hid herself in the crowd of servants returning to the castle. Christof called after her but he did not try to follow.