“You aren’t real. Stay away from me.” I backed up until my back pressed against the door, but Lord Winslow advanced. “No, no, no.” I shut my eyes to force the hallucinations away.
Fingers, gentle and reassuring, touched my face. Arms embraced me as my legs gave out, and my world went dark.
My lids opened. The dark of night encompassed me, and I adjusted to my surroundings. A fire crackled and flickered nearby, and I gazed at the familiarity of the canopy above the bed in my chamber. I rolled onto my side and drew a sharp breath at the sight of Lord Winslow standing at the fireplace with his hand resting on the mantel, staring into the flames. He rubbed a hand over his face and muttered to himself. I propped myself up, and he glanced up at my movement.
“You are awake. We’ve been worried about you.” He strode to the nightstand and lit the lantern.
I looked down and found myself fully clothed, but my shoes had been removed. What was he doing in my chamber? And where were the children? I moved to swing my legs off the bed, but he leaned down and stopped me with a hand pressed on my shoulder.
“Rest. All is taken care of.” Tenderness glimmered in his eyes.
The fog in my brain shifted, and I remembered the incident in the foyer when he and Mrs. Potts had cornered me. A shiver scurried over my limbs. Orell? Had it all been a dream? It felt so real. I glanced at Lord Winslow, whose hand remained on my shoulder, and I touched his face with the tips of my fingers. “You are real?” I searched his face for confirmation.
His mouth curved into a smile. “As real as you are.”
And the meadow…was that real? Or the beast that had evolved into my brother…I wanted to bombard him with the questions racing through my head, but I feared he’d think I’d lost my mind. And I wasn’t sure I hadn’t.
“But how did you get back?” I asked, and when he looked at me in confusion I hurried to explain myself. “You all were gone, maybe an hour or two. And a trip to the village takes a good part of the day.”
He straightened. “Yes, well, we didn’t make it to the village. The carriage wheel hit a rut and broke clean off before we made it a few miles. We returned on foot, and I wasn’t aware you’d left until you bolted through the door with that strange fellow.”
“His name is Flicker. I’d written to him to inform him I was safe and where I was staying. I sent the letter when I was in town; I hope you don’t mind?” The lie poured from my tongue.
“Not at all,” he said. “He is a friend of yours?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t mind that he’s a dwarf?” he asked.
I sat erect as defensiveness stirred in me. “What does that matter? He is honest and good. And he’s someone who means everything to me.” Panic clutched me as I spoke the truth I’d believed of Flicker, but after what had happened…. But what had happened? I swung my legs to the floor and scampered off the bed.
“Steady now, you had a terrible scare from the looks of you when you turned up here.” He reached out to steady me. His touch was gentle.
I shuffled to the looking glass with him holding my arm, his other hand pressing lightly on the curve of my back. My heart surged with gratitude for his kindness. As I stood in front of the glass he released me, and I regarded my reflection. Leaves and debris matted my hair and mud caked my frock. Threads of red ran through my eyes, the lids swollen from past tears. Welts marked my cheeks from the lash of the tree branches.
“Looks like you took a tumble,” he said, peering at me through the glass.
“Yes.” I veered from the mirror. “Thank you for your kindness and understanding. If you don’t mind, I’d like to change and check on the children.”
“Very well. I will leave you.” He strode to the open door, but paused in the hallway. “Will you be all right?” Concern haloed his face, and the way the flickering light from the corridor sconces illuminated his flesh licked at my heart.
I pressed my lips together to hold back the sobs gathering in my throat and nodded. Perhaps I had taken a tumble.
He rested a hand on the doorframe. “Are you sure you’re up to caring for the children?”
I smiled. “They keep my mind busy and off what lies beyond these walls.”
His footfalls faded in the corridor, and I closed the door and retrieved a clean dress from the wardrobe. Behind the privacy screen, I wiggled out of my stockings and reached around to untie my apron when I spotted the withered flower. My chest pounded, and with trembling hands I removed the flower. Flicker. The meadow. The beast…my brother. It was all real. The flower fell to the floor and I stumbled to the bed, clutching the bedpost to keep upright. All of it came rushing back. “It has awakened,” Flicker had said. My stomach knotted. Would I too become a monster like Orell?
Later that night, after I’d put the children to bed, I retired to my room.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay with you?” Yara stood outside my chamber. “Lord Winslow gave his approval.”
“I will be fine. I wish to be alone,” I said. Reading the concern in her eyes, I stroked her arm. “I will see you in the morning.”
“If you’re sure.” She didn’t appear keen on the idea but didn’t push the matter further.
“I’m fine, truly,” I said. “It’s nothing rest won’t cure.” I’d played the incident off as though I’d hit my head when Lord Winslow and Mrs. Potts had eyed me suspiciously, after I’d changed and joined them downstairs.
That night I tossed and turned, my dreams filled with my mutation into a grotesque creature that unleashed horrors throughout the valley. I awoke in the early hours of the morning, before the household stirred, and dressed. I tiptoed down the back stairs and into the kitchen to retrieve a blade before slipping out the door and racing to the stables. Once there, I saddled my mare and swung up onto her back, and without glancing back, I rode down the lane to the main road. It was only a matter of time before they noticed I was missing. Leaving without permission meant I was jeopardizing everything. But I didn’t know where else to turn—I had to find Nisse, and tell him about Orell and what Flicker had said. Alert to my surroundings, I rode the mare hard in the direction of Schläfrigz. The image of my brother in the meadow revolved in my head. What had happened to him?
As I approached the village some hours later, I reined in my horse at the sight of the blockades across the road. A quilt of silence had extinguished the usual vigor of townsfolk as they went about their day-to-day business. The delectable aromas that usually hung in the air above the bakery and the chocolatier’s shop were missing. Melancholy shrouded the quaint village with its transformation into a fortress. Lookouts hunched on rooftops, maintaining surveillance of the Alps and forest. The uncanny sensation that something terrible had happened made my stomach drop.
Taking in the scene before me, I realized they had prepared for battle. But the patrols had no idea what they stood against. The beast towered over the height of the walls and could clear the lot of them with one sweep of its arm. I had to find Nisse and tell him what I’d witnessed, He would prepare the villagers for what lay beyond the comforts of Schläfrigz. I nudged my horse on with light touch to her flanks.
“Who goes there?” a voice called from behind the barrier.
“It is me, Valentina Fürst,” I said.
Silence followed until the gate screeched open a crack, and the bellow came again. “Dismount and come here. Let me look at you.”
I strode to the gate.
Signor Zesiger, the butcher, clad in armor fashioned of wood planks and metal, revealed his face. “It looks like you, but one can never be too sure. Come closer,” he said.
Again I complied, walking until I stood within inches of him. He gripped my face in his beefy hands and stared into my eyes as if expecting to glimpse the reflection of a monster.
The intensity of his scrutiny relaxed, and he released me. “Is it really you?”
“It is me, signor,” I said.
“Where have you been? Everyone’s
been wondering what happened to you and your brother after the beast tore up your home.”
“I took a job in another canton. Only returned when word reached me that there was trouble.” Guilt gripped me at the lies I continued to weave.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” he said. “You were safe outside of the valley, and to travel here alone was dangerous. Maybe you’re the fortunate one of the Fürst lot.”
The statement kicked me in the stomach. My family was gone. Each and every one of them. And as a new contemplation surfaced, I quivered. What if the beast was responsible for my parents’ disappearance? Had Orell killed them?
“Are you all right?” Signor Zesiger asked, plucking me from the troubling thought.
I gulped back tears. “I need to check on a friend.”
“No one is allowed in or out. Council’s orders. I shouldn’t be letting you in, but I never got to repay your mutter for saving my boy from the fever. Once I give you sanctuary, I can’t let you out.” His warning clear, I nodded.
I had to get back to the estate and beg Lord Winslow to keep me on, but at the moment the dire need to seek Nisse’s counsel took precedence over all of my concerns. If Lord Winslow found out my brother was a monster and the one wreaking havoc in the valley, he’d send me on my way as quick as nothing.
Signor Zesiger granted me entry and dragged the gate closed. I walked past the guards posted throughout the streets, and the solemnness that had settled over Schläfrigz was unnerving. Merchants and townsfolk had retreated inside and boarded the windows of their homes and shops. Even the poor had vanished. The eyes of the ones hiding in the sewer peered at me from the openings in the cobblestone. Fear hung over the rooftops and flooded the streets and alleys.
At Nisse’s vater’s shop, I found the place in the same state as the others. I pulled on the door, but it wouldn’t budge. I beat on the door with an open palm. “Herr Strasser? Nisse? It’s me, Valentina.” I waited, but no answer came.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the little minx that slithered away,” a voice purred behind me.
I spun around to face Helias and took a few steps back. “You stay away from me. The answer remains the same, I won’t marry you. Not now or in another lifetime.”
He laughed. “No need to worry, I’ve moved on. Got me a wife that met my vater’s approval. Though she isn’t as intoxicating as you.” His gaze was feverish.
“I mean it, you stay away from me.” I yanked the blade from inside my cloak and jabbed it at him as he advanced.
His eyes widened, and he stopped in his tracks. “You got some nerve, pulling a blade on me. I could gut you right here and scream ‘Teufel,’ and no one would think anything different.”
“I’d rather be gutted spleen to throat than be touched by the likes of you,” I said, my nose twitching with disgust.
“You come looking for the watchmaker’s son?”
“What if I have?” I said.
“You won’t find him. He took off some months after his vater died.”
“Herr Strasser is dead?” My blade faltered at the news. “What happened?” I failed to hide the anguish in my voice.
“The beast got him. Shredded him like paper. His son went out on patrols with the rest of the men and pestered villagers with endless questions before he just took off one day. The tavern owner said he was headed for England.”
Nisse. A chasm opened in the pit of my stomach for his loss. I shook at the vision of his vater’s brutal death. “What for,” I said.
Helias shrugged his broad shoulders. “Most likely saw his chance to escape and took it.”
He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. My throat thickened. “He’s an honorable man. He wouldn’t just pick up and leave when his home is in turmoil.”
“Grief can do strange things to a person. Besides, why do you care if he left anyway? You take a fancy to him?” His gaze was sharp and assessing.
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me.” He strode forward, and I thrust the blade toward him.
He wailed and clutched his side as blood blossomed on the fabric of his shirt and dripped on the cobblestones. He gaped at me. “You little whore, y-you stabbed me.”
“And I’ll do it again if you move an inch closer.” Heat flared within me. But, reluctant to back down, he came again. “I mean it, stay away, or I will leave your body on the cobblestones.” I took a step forward.
Alarm lit in his eyes, and he halted. A muscle twitched in the corner of his eye. “You win this time, but beware, I won’t forget this.”
I straightened my shoulders and glared at him while my insides trembled. “No, I’m sure you won’t.”
Helias retreated, and I lowered my blade and released my pent breath. I leaned back against the wall of the shop to steady my trembling body. I’d been a fool to come. Nisse was gone, and I’d risked everything to achieve nothing. Teardrops stained the front of my cape. What was I supposed to do now? Signor Zesiger had said no one was permitted in or out. I regarded my surroundings, feeling despondent before my gaze halted on the slot in the cobblestones. The sewers. That was my only option.
I sat down on the front stoop and removed one of my stockings before slipping the shoe back on and tying the cloth over my nose and mouth. “You have to stay here,” I said to the mare as I caressed her muzzle.
I lowered myself down into the sewers, and hands reached up to assist me. As I splashed into the waste and darkness, my stomach roiled, and I fought to keep its contents down. People huddled in the dark, and somewhere a babe cried. Guilt weighed in my chest at the suffering caused by my own flesh and blood. I had to repair my brother’s depravity and set everything right, but how?
I waded through the underground tunnels, asking directions to the point where the sewers emptied into the river. Daylight flickered ahead, and, eager to put the stench behind me, I pushed my weary legs onward.
At the egress, guards drawn from the ranks of the impoverished eyed me warily as I approached. “Halt.” A man blocked my exit with his staff. “No one comes in or out.”
“My children are out there,” I said, lowering the stocking masking my face. “Our rations ran out, and I risked all coming to the village in hopes of finding food, but I didn’t have enough coin. I’m their only hope, and without me, they will surely perish.” I started weeping, drawing on the hole in my soul that had grown with my admission into Schläfrigz and the discovery of Nisse’s absence.
“Let her go.” A woman stepped from the shadows. “If she is fool enough to go out there, then she deserves to serve as food for the beast. Better her than us.”
I concealed my shock at her callousness, but as the man stepped aside she grabbed a fistful of my cape and shoved me forward. Then I was free-falling over the side of a cliff. Panic seized me, and I flailed my limbs as the air snatched my breath. Calm yourself, Valentina, or you will die on impact, a woman’s voice said, as clear as though she sailed with me toward certain death below. The currents of the river raced to meet me, and I prepared myself for impact.
I met the water with a flesh-separating smack, but I didn’t have time to reflect on the pain as I went under. I clawed for the surface, and as my head broke through I gasped and inhaled before the current captured me. The water thrashed my body. Stay calm, the lulling voice urged. I emerged a few times, and each time my hands flailed for anything to grasp onto. Submerged, I clutched a tree root protruding from the bank and held on as I struggled toward the surface. In the shallows at last, I climbed up the riverbank and sprawled belly down on the ground, gasping, my chest burning with the intake of water.
When I recovered, I pushed to my feet and got my bearings before I began the long journey back to the chateau. Worry at what awaited me churned in my stomach.
I’d walked for hours before I detected the earthmen’s mounts charging down the road toward me and then, as if spotting me, they reined in their steeds and veered off into the woods. When I walked by the area where they had vanished,
I called out, “You could at least accompany me home, after you took all the trouble to track me down.”
I heard a curse, but they didn’t reveal themselves, and I continued along the main road, their presence, as limited as it was, providing me with some solace.
When I arrived at the estate minutes before dusk, I took a deep breath and entered the servants’ door. As I’d expected, Mrs. Potts and Lord Winslow awaited me.
After Mrs. Potts left, I stood shivering in my soiled clothing in the middle of the study.
“What were you thinking? You gave us all a fright.” Lord Winslow stood before me, and I looked away under the pressure of his gaze.
I felt utter despair. “I can only offer my apologies, my lord. I thought myself unfit to care for your children and got the fool idea to leave.”
“Care to explain the stench spewing from you?”
Taking a calming breath, I said, “I fell into the river the village sewer flows into. If you wish for me to leave, I will not hold it against you.”
He scoffed. “I would think not. You act rash, and such behavior isn’t acceptable. What has gotten into you?”
“I don’t know, my lord. But if you can find it within you to bestow on me another chance, I won’t mess up again.”
“I’d hope not,” he said. “I don’t paint you as a rash person. A little tumble that caused you to imagine things is no reason to send us all into a panic.”
But it wasn’t my imagination. It was real. Very real. I wiped my palms in the folds of my skirt. “Again, I apologize.”
He paced the room. “What am I to do with you?”
“I’ll work in the stable yards, or whatever you find suitable. But please hear me when I say it won’t happen again.” I crept forward, and he held up a hand to stop me.
“You reek of sewage,” he said. “Your trial had ended and I’d hoped to keep you on, but with your recent shenanigans I question if it’s wise.”
“Please, I beg of you.” I detested the desperation in my voice, but I had no choice. On the journey back to the estate, I realized that I had to bide my time. And with no place to go, I needed the refuge of his estate.
The Maid of Chateau Winslow Page 15
