The Legacy (30 page)

“What?”

“I killed his son,” she repeated, looking up at him, and her eyes filled with shame. “It is why the baron hates me so much, why he can never forgive me. Carl was his only male heir, and the family will lose the barony if he dies without one. Remember, without him, it goes to a distant relative who still shares the von Ziegler name. Everything he has done to secure the line will be for naught. Moreover, I think—I think he genuinely loved Carl, as he has loved no one else before or since. And every time he sees my face, sees me alive and breathing, it is a reminder to him Carl is dead and I am not.”

Wolf was speechless. He tried to sort out her words in his mind, but they made no sense. How could she have killed anyone? He shook his head in disbelief.

“It is true,” she insisted. “So now you know why he hates me so.” And in a small voice, “Why you should hate me, too.”

That he understood. He sat up, bringing her with him, and grasped her shoulders. Staring her directly in the eye, he admonished, “Don’t ever say that. Don’t even think it. Whatever happened to your brother, whatever the story is, I do not believe for a moment you are a murderess. Besides, I couldn’t hate you if I tried. I lo—” He broke off, his mind veering off sharply from the surge of emotion he had experienced for just a moment.

Sabina looked at him; hope filled her eyes.

He thought of Beth, and his sense of betrayal returned in a rush. He struggled briefly with it, then submitted. “I know you, Sabina. Well enough to know, that while you have a rather feisty temper, you are no murderess, despite what the baron might say.”

She blinked. The look of hope was gone, the disappointment on her face clear. “You do not know anything,” she finally said, and turned from him, her face toward the wall.

“Sabina …” he said, reaching for her. She stiffened, and he let his hand fall away. “Tell me, then. All of it.”

“So you wish to know the whole story, do you?” She looked at him over her shoulder. Her eyes burned with a hard fever; they were hardly like her, so bitter and full of resentment. The change astounded him. She gave him a smile, its usual brightness now false and harsh.

“Are you certain you want to hear it? You know what they say about getting what you wish for.”

He knew a moment of real trepidation. Mayhap he did not want to know. Mayhap it would be best for both of them if he did not know.

And mayhap he was merely being a coward. “Tell me.”

“Very well. You may want to avail yourself of a handkerchief. It is truly—” she laughed cynically, “—a sad tale.”

She sat up and curled her legs beneath her; her eyes did not meet his.

“It begins like this. Once upon a time, there was a young man. A boy of fourteen. He had a little sister. She was ten. The boy, we will call him Carl, was going out to make mischief on St. Walpurgis’ night, before the May Day spring festival the next morning. The little sister wanted to go, too, but Carl said she was just a girl. She could not go out on such a night making mischief to drive away witches. It was boys’ work, he said.

“But she was so stubborn, and full of pride, and she knew all about his pranks the year before and thought them infinitely exciting. Carl had often bragged how they took horns and noisemakers and went about town all night, making enough noise to frighten off the dead. Carl and his friends had taken apart a wooden cart and put it back together again on the city’s old Town Hall roof as a jest. Oh, the uproar they caused! It made him a legend, you see, and he had to do something even grander this time around. He couldn’t with his little sister following along behind.

“But when he left that night, the sister went with him and his three friends. No one knew. She was small, and she hid in their horse cart, under a blanket, and rode with them right down to the river. There were all kinds of implements hidden in the cart for making mischief on the docks. She would stay out of the way, she thought, and see what they were doing. They were having such a wonderful time they did not even notice her. When they got out of the cart the third or fourth time, she did too. She could not see much in the cart. She wanted a better view. So she ran along the water’s edge, keeping hidden the whole way. They never saw her. But someone else did.”

Wolf felt his heart leap, as if this was indeed some dreadful ghost story, but he knew it had all happened, the ghosts were real.

“Who saw?” he asked tightly.

“It was a man, a sailor. He had been watching, following her. He caught her hiding behind some crates. She tried to run away, but he grabbed her, shoved her head down against him until she thought she could not breathe, that she would suffocate …”

Sabina took a gasping breath, as though reliving the memory physically. “He told her to … put her mouth on him. She saw his—thing—come out, and she was afraid. She screamed, oh how she screamed. She cried for her brother, but the man got scared, hit her to make her stop. He pulled out a short knife—the kind the sailors use to gut fish?”

She looked at Wolf, and he nodded stiffly that he understood.

She looked away again. “He told her not to make another sound, or he would gut Carl—and then he shoved his hand up her skirts.”

Wolf winced.

Sabina shuddered once, then went still. “She tried to be quiet. She loved her brother. But she was so scared, and what he did was hurting, and I—she did not think. She screamed again. The next thing she knew, Carl was there, crashing into him, jumping on his back, hitting him and shouting for her to run.

“And like a coward, she did, screaming over and over. His friends heard, too, finally, and they came running, but it was too late. The man had stuck the knife in Carl’s stomach, and pulled it out again. Then he stuck it in his face. Carl looked so … surprised.”

“God’s bones,” Wolf breathed. As he sat beside her on the wide bed, fifteen years after the fact, he could feel her unbearable pain as if he had been on that dock, as if he had seen his only brother die an abominable death. He couldn’t stand the knowledge of the pain, couldn’t understand how she had survived it for so many years.

She was silent as the memories echoed across time. She seemed to hear them, tilted her head to receive them, then went ruthlessly, relentlessly on.

“The sailor pushed Carl into the river. The girl dived in after him, right away, but she was small, only ten, and could not hold him. The river carried him away, nearly took her too. One of the other boys jumped in, but he could not find Carl below the black water, in that black night. He saved the girl, though.”

“What happened to—?”

“The sailor? Oh, the other boys killed him,” she said matter-of-factly. “They had their daggers, and they kicked him, got him down and slit his throat. It was not much of a fight, though. He was drunk. They threw his body into the water, too.” She shrugged. “What difference did it make? Carl was already dead.”

She lifted her knees and folded her arms around them, huddling against the cold memories. “Carl’s body washed ashore down river two days later. Tragically, he had not died right away—he drowned, the doctor said, because his lungs were full of water and he had the look of a drowned man. The girl saw him. Her father made her look. They were right. He lived just long enough to drown—”

“Stop,” Wolf whispered, horrified. “Please, stop.”

She went on, her voice monotone, emotionless, as though he had not spoken.

“Her father made her stand by Carl’s body while her mother dressed it for burial. And when it was all done, when they had dressed him in his shroud, and placed him in the vault, her father looked at her and said,
‘It should have been you, you know. He is dead because of you.’“

“Jesu … by what
right?”
Wolf thundered. “How dare he say such a thing, how dare he even think it? By all that is holy—”

She turned her blank gaze on him again. “But he was right,” she said, her look implying he was stupid for not seeing it himself. “I would gladly have taken Carl’s place. Instead, I as much as killed him. It
should
have been me.”

“Nay!”

“So,” she shrugged again, “that is the end of the story. Not a very good one, is it? No fairy tale ending, I am afraid. Not this time. Mayhap I shall have to make up my own. I do not think it will be told much, else wise. What do you think? Should I have the heroine marry her true love and live happily ever after?” She smiled bitterly at him and then shook her head. “Nay, I suppose not. No one would believe such pure nonsense.” She turned toward the wall.

Wolf was stunned. The story was bad enough—but her belief she should have been the one to die—it was monstrous. What the baron had done to her was nearly worse than what Wolf had earlier accused him. The Devil dwelt in that man, and if it were the last act of Wolf’s life, he would see him exorcised from Sabina’s life forever.

She lay with her back to him, the sleekly defined ridges of her spine and shoulder blades trembling. The absence of sound made her anguish all the more intense to him. He put out a hand to her, gently caressing her soft skin. She jerked away, but he gathered her determinedly into his arms, folding himself around her, pressing his chest to her back, his knees to the curve of her legs.

“Nay,” she finally gasped. “I cannot bear it—I will not bear your pity … nay!”

She struggled, refusing to be comforted. He didn’t release her, and finally her tremors grew into full-blown shaking, her silence into breath-stealing shudders. Still he held her, simply held her. After a long time, when the shudders began to die down, he put his mouth near her ear so she would be certain to hear him, and he spoke.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

She jerked as though he’d slapped her across the face. “It was! He said—”

He interrupted her. “It doesn’t matter what he said, it was
not
your fault.”

She shook her head in denial. “I should not have followed Carl, I should not have screamed, I should not have run away—”

“You made a mistake. You were ten. You were afraid. It wasn’t your fault.” He held her tightly as she suddenly surged, fighting like a wildcat.

“He was my brother!” she shouted, beyond reason. “If I had just submitted, done what the man wanted—”

“Then you’d be raped, and probably dead, and your brother would be blaming himself. Just as you are blaming yourself now. It wasn’t your fault,” he repeated resolutely, grabbing her arms as she continued to flail. He pressed her against his chest, refusing to release her. She was no match for his greater strength.

“Nay!” Her voice broke into a keening wail. She tried to strike at him, tried to twist away, but the bedcovers tangled around her legs. She kicked at them furiously, making inadvertent contact with his knee. He grunted from the sharp stab of pain, but he didn’t release her.

Wrenching sobs racked her body. “He should have lived, he died for nothing!”

“He died for
you!”
Wolf turned her roughly, shook her until she looked him in the eye. “Not because of you,
but for you!”

When he thought about how close he had come to never having met her—he stared at her, so thankful for her brother’s courage, so grateful for her presence here. He touched his palm to her cheek, willing her to understand.

“There is a difference,” he said, more gently now.

Sabina stared at him, eyes wide.

“Your brother was a hero, Sabina, not a sacrifice. Don’t let that devil take that away from you. Don’t let
anyone
take that away from you. Your brother died saving his sister, whom he loved.”

Wolf struggled for the right words, to make her understand. “Carl could have run away. He could have waited for his friends to aid him, but he didn’t. It was his choice, Sabina. No one forced it upon him. He did it because he thought you were worthy of being saved. That is his legacy to you. Don’t ignore it. Don’t throw it away, because if you do, he really
will have
died in vain.”

She went suddenly still, almost unnaturally so. His words seemed to echo in the room. Her eyes stared off beyond him. A furrow creased her brow.

Sabina’s mind worked desperately, trying to grasp what Wolf had said. She had never thought of it in such a way. She had been so torn by guilt, so certain she was at fault, she had never thought to question the baron’s accusations. How could she, a frightened ten-year-old child, be held responsible for what a sadistic monster on the docks had done to her brother? How could the baron have made her bear that guilt for so long?

Wrapped up in her own grief, she had never even thought to give thanks for what Carl had so selflessly done for her. They should have put up monuments to him instead of burying him in shameful silence. The baron had been afraid of the scandal, of what people would say. They had lied, said her brother drowned accidentally.

They had never even discussed the sailor, whose nameless body had washed ashore several days later and been buried in an unmarked grave by the city when no one came to claim it. The other boys, her brother’s friends, never came around again, and from that day to this, she presumed no one had ever spoken another word of what they had done for her family.
They
were heroes, too.

“It was not my fault,” she said, hesitant, afraid to believe.

“Nay, Sabina.” Wolf’s other hand cupped her face, and he gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. He gazed at her, a wealth of unexpressed emotion in his eyes.

She closed her eyes. Her tears slipped out again, silent as silver.

“It was never your fault,” he murmured.

Without another word, she crawled up onto his lap. She let him rock her while she sobbed like the child still living in her heart, lonely and unloved for so many years, until the dawn broke over the river and sunlight streamed golden across the sky.

S
abina put a hand to the small of her back and stretched, allowing the handle of the garden hoe to rest against her abdomen for a moment. She felt a slight popping up her spine and sighed with relief. Gardening could be enjoyable, but hard on the back. That and being married to a randy husband. She glanced around to make certain Bea, who worked on the row at the opposite end of the garden, could not see her blush.