She looked through the bars of the cage and up at Gerhard, who now would barely spare her a single glance. How was this even possible? She had thought that they had something between them, she’d thought that she meant something special to him! All those drawings, all that time looking deep into his eyes and seeing only a man who wanted to be something to her.
Now, the only thing he seemed to want to be was a complete prig! Her bottom lip began to tremble again and she struggled not to cry in front of all these people. She would not break down.
“Soldier, take this filth to Vienna. Let the emperor meet out justice to her!” Gerhard demanded in a loud bark, and again the soldiers cheered around her. In moments, there was a violent jerk as the large horse carrying her cart pulled forward.
She watched as the crowd parted around her and more food and dung was tossed on her through the wooden bars. At least there were no more rocks… but at the moment that wasn’t much solace. As the cart moved forward, she watched Gerhard, curious if he was going to look at her with even a sliver of regret. But as he watched her being carried off, he showed no expression.
Her heart felt broken, but she wasn’t able to cry as she had last night after getting her spanking. For some reason that pain was able to open her up and wring out most of her depression. Now, she was beginning to realize that no tears would come even if she did want them to.
She looked upwards at the hill, at Hohenzollern, and it came to her that she would never see her home ever again. She saw the faint outline of people watching from the ramparts, but she couldn’t make out faces. She wondered if her sister could see her, or any of her kin, but then she hoped that they couldn’t, that they would never know how she was carried off.
There was a small snort and a nudge on her thigh. She looked down and saw the little face of the piglet looking up at her, and as she watched, it invited itself onto her lap. She placed her hands around its warm, chubby little body and she melted a little bit, feeling the stone in her throat return. At least something in this world seemed to like her…
* * *
The cart was far away from the army before they were joined by several men on horseback a couple of hours later. Apparently, they were her guard to keep her safe from highwaymen. Rennio, unfortunately, was among them.
“It took you long enough!” the cart driver snapped. “I was nearly thinking of turning around!”
“It’s his fault,” one of the soldiers, a large, bald man, grunted unhappily as he jerked his head in Rennio’s direction. “My wife could pack a whole trunk faster than it took him to pack his satchel!”
“Well, the commander was suddenly in a rush to get her as far away from him as possible,” Rennio replied defensively. “Gave me absolutely no time at all to prepare!”
“Prepare what, packing your dresses?” another soldier teased. All the other soldiers laughed.
“They’re called robes,” Rennio replied with weary exasperation, then took a swig of his horn, which she had a feeling was filled with ale or wine rather than water. She had scorned food the night before, but now her lips were parched and her stomach was growling. She licked her lips.
Rennio seemed to notice and leaned his horse toward the cart, putting out his horn. “Wine, your majesty?” he asked, mockery in his tone.
She pursed her lips together in response to his sarcastic tone, but then she reached for the horn. He pulled it out of reach just as her fingers had nearly grasped it. He laughed, pulled it back, and then took a mouthful of wine, only to spit it on her a moment later.
She heaved a cry like an angry animal, unable to put her emotions into words. He laughed. “We’ll feed you at camp if you’re a good girl,” he mocked.
The pig snorted, sounding angry on her behalf. She knew it was probably just coincidence of course, but it endeared her to the little animal even more. Rennio even glared at the piglet in response and then turned away as if told off. The pig, as if wearied by the effort, turned back around on her lap and lay down, continuing to warm her against the chill of the wind that was beginning to become so violent that it was making the cart sway back and forth.
As the hours paced on, her nose began to feel numb from the bitter cold, which she actually found to be a blessing. It made it nearly impossible to smell the stink of her confines. She sniffled loudly, then rubbed her nose against her sleeve, mostly in an attempt to warm it.
“Stop your noise!” Rennio growled at her as he trotted his horse along by her. Apparently her chattering teeth and her sniffling were beginning to offend him.
“Oy, bishop! Leave her be!” one of the soldiers groaned. “I’ve seen dogs treated better. I thought you were supposed to treat her kindly.”
“I had to read too many men’s last rights this week to treat her kindly. Make no mistakes—it’s jezebels like her that doomed us out of the garden in the first place,” he replied, taking another swig of wine.
She squared her shoulders. “What harm have I done to you?” she asked him defensively, nearly as surprised at his harsh turn around as Gerhard’s. He had never been particularly nice, true. But he hadn’t been particularly mean or nasty, either. It was as if he hadn’t met her before that day and then simply decided to blame her for every sin of humankind. Yesterday she had thought that, even though he obviously didn’t take his religious duties very seriously, he wasn’t a cruel man.
He then listed far too loudly to be necessary all the things her uncle had done in her name as she stared blankly at the back of her cage, not bothering to listen. She was contemplating what must have happened overnight, what sort of evil seemed to possess these men, because the world was undoubtedly crueler today than it was yesterday.
She sat back in her cage and looked up at the sky above. Her dolling up that morning had obviously not done any good. Somehow this actually bothered her, though she hadn’t ever been accused of being particularly vain. She had hoped she would at least be able to be presented to the emperor looking more like a princess during her trial, and not so much like a pig farmer.
“Can’t you please at least let me have a blanket?” she begged him, trying to get her chattering teeth to still, gathering the piglet into her robes to be closer to her belly. “I’m going to die of cold.”
He snorted. “Enjoy the cold. All you’ll have is hellfire soon enough…”
She shriveled at his cold inhumanity. “You are the most hateful person I’ve ever known!” she spat.
He pointed to the pig. “Complain to someone who gives a damn,” he told her coldly.
It hadn’t been a bad idea. Not that she complained to the animal, but she found him cuddly and even loveable. She felt at least that the pig wouldn’t turn on her by tomorrow morning.
“Stop,” Rennio called to the soldiers at the front of the carriage that were leading the way. It was now the tenth time the party had needed to stop so that Rennio could find a bush for privacy.
“Christ! My horse doesn’t shit as much as you do!” one of the soldiers, a very sturdy and frightening looking man with a head shaved entirely bald yet a beard down to his chest, groused with a groan. She had a feeling that they had no choice in the matter. Rennio must have outranked them all. “I wanted to get across the river before nightfall!”
“Just camp here,” Rennio said, waving his hand as if he thought the soldier was being ridiculously whiney.
“We can’t camp here! I keep telling you, this is the worst spot to be. There’s nothing for the horses, and there’s no way to protect ourselves from the wood! On the other side of the river there’s far better shelter. Don’t be an idiot, priest!” the man bellowed. “Just hurry this time!”
“Fine, fine,” Rennio sighed, but then he wandered off and didn’t hurry at all. The soldiers left behind were finally beginning to talk amongst themselves about who would go out looking for him before Rennio finally came back just as the sky was getting even darker.
Susanna began to have a bad feeling. The soldiers were very unsettled and up
set, and their nervousness permeated the air around them until she was even more worried about the journey than she had been previously, only this time she didn’t even have any idea why. Not until they came upon the river, at least.
As soon as she caught a single glance at the raging, black water, she began to feel just as frightful as the horses who were stomping their feet all around her, making the carriage heave to and fro. She grabbed the wooden bars with her scraped hands, trying to steady herself.
“This looks dangerous,” Rennio stated with annoyance.
She wanted, more than anything, for one of the soldiers to slap him across the face. It was certainly not a far jump to assume that that’s exactly what they wanted to do, anyway.
“That’s why we wanted to go over earlier! So we could see better over the crossing!” the bald soldier all but shouted at Rennio, who seemed unfazed. “Now let’s hurry before we can’t even see our feet!”
As they slowly guided their horses to the edge, their steeds once again stomped and whinnied at what they were going to be forced to do. The water wasn’t very deep—it would probably only go up just past the knee—but it seemed like it was moving far too swiftly to safely cross. Apparently, however, they were going to cross nonetheless. She gripped her piglet tightly against her, ignoring its unhappy snorts.
With a lot of complaining amongst the screaming of unhappy horses, the company slowly entered the fast-moving stream, and the cart jerked violently as the horse reared.
She held her breath, absolutely certain that the cart was going to fall sideways into the water and she was going to drown. The horse slowly settled down and then, suddenly, a huge gust of wind picked up, the water below the carriage wheels surged, and she heard the wheel beneath her body break.
She screamed as the cart, horse and all, heaved onto its side, and the cage immediately filled with ice-cold water that made her scream with pain and fright just before it went up over her head. The cart had gone free somehow, and she was swept below the water in the wreckage.
The piglet screamed and kicked his little feet, trying to climb up on her to get out of the cold water. She held it in her arms and kicked out with her feet as hard as she could. She didn’t think it would have worked as well as it did, because the cage fell into splinters with the first kick, several bars falling out and being swept downstream in huge pieces. She rushed through the bars and into the water, which immediately got deeper. She felt her head sink beneath the waves for a terrifying moment but then she bobbed back up. She tried wearily to swim toward the riverbank, though it seemed like she couldn’t even move an inch in the right direction.
The stream pulled her even faster, spinning her body out of control, and all she could do was kick and try to keep her head above the water, holding onto the squirming pig as they were swept around a bend. She heard the river roar up ahead and even though she couldn’t see, she had an uncanny feeling that they were coming up toward a drop of some sort. The rushing water sounded hollow and expansive, like a waterfall she used to walk under when she was a child… which wasn’t good.
Her arms and legs were so numb with the cold that they felt useless, and her soaking wet dress, underskirts, and cloak made her feel as though someone had tied a sack of stones around her waist.
“Drop the pig!” she heard someone shout from somewhere nearby.
She gripped the piglet tighter as she sputtered and choked, looking desperately around in the darkness while trying to keep her head above the water. She couldn’t see anyone, and she imagined that she had to be far away from the party that was charged with bringing her to Vienna.
Suddenly she felt hands reach around her. “Susanna!” a voice cried out simultaneously. The arms were strong, and warm. The pig screeched. “Drop that bloody pig and hold onto me!” a man’s voice demanded in her ear.
She held her breath, still trying to kick against the current even as the man held her tight. They were both jerked suddenly backwards against the current and she realized that whoever had her was tied to a rope. She gave a choked cry in surprise. “Damn it, I’ve got you. Hold on!”
She wasn’t going to drop the pig. It oinked in her ear unhappily, and she took a deep breath in as her eyes burned from the water. She was able to see now that it was Gerhard that had her held firmly with one strong arm. She was surprised, but her brain refused to wonder at it. It was too concentrated on her survival and the extreme cold all around her.
He slowly pulled them to shore and, as soon as his feet were steady, he picked her up into his arms and carried her up the stream. “Damn that stupid pig,” he said, and she could hear that his breath sounded like he was in the midst of shuddering. Apparently he, too, was cold as could be.
She couldn’t respond. Her chest felt constricted by the cold, and she stayed perfectly still as he pulled her up into a wagon and placed her onto a dry surface. He bent over her and loosened her arms from the pig, which squealed and shook itself off as Gerhard focused on getting her cloak unfastened. As if her clothes were poisoned, he moved quickly, his teeth chattering every bit as much as hers were. “We have to get you dry,” he told her as he peeled off her cold layers. She laid there, feeling numb and paralyzed with confusion and cold. She felt absolutely helpless—she wondered if she could move much more in any contingency. He threw a giant blanket over her, and she curled up into it. She saw his figure shuck his own pants off and then redress. He jumped down from the covered wagon where he had placed her, leaving her nestled among dark shadows of crates or boxes.
There was an unhappy squeal and little hooves hit the boards near her body, and then the piglet nuzzled into her, nosing its way under the blanket. Less than five minutes had passed since she was rescued from the water, yet already she was in another wagon, and the horses were underway, being directed through the dark.
“G-G-Gerhard!” she stuttered, speaking to the ceiling, suddenly wanting to know what had just happened, where she was, and where she was going.
“Shush!” he demanded. “Keep quiet, sweeting,” he replied earnestly. “Keep quiet.”
She had no trouble doing that. She was mostly invested in making sure her fingers and toes regained blood flow. Every part of her body felt sore down to the bone and being wrapped in the warm, dry blanket was heavenly.
She wasn’t sure if they stopped at all during the night. She kept drifting into a deep sleep, despite the wobbling of the wagon and the screeching of the wheels beneath her. It was hard to believe that Gerhard could drive the cart through the night without any rest at all, but she woke up when the wagon finally came to a stop, and when it did, a dull light lit up the canvas overhead.
She heard the sound of a sigh and then Gerhard jumped up on the back of the wagon and, picking up a second blanket, slowly lay down next to her. He ended up lying on the pig’s tail, which was apparently a big insult to the little beast, because it squealed, got up, and danced angrily about before settling down between them.
Susanna watched him as he looked down at the pig for a second, surely deciding whether or not to boot the presumptuous animal out of the wagon altogether. He twisted his lips and then looked up, meeting her eyes. She suddenly felt so full of emotion that it seemed just as hard to breathe now as it had in the icy cold water. She didn’t even know what to say or how to start asking what had just happened and why he had saved her from the water.
He reached over and put his hand on her cheek. “I am so sorry, sweeting. I know yesterday was hell for you, and I’m completely responsible for putting you through it. I can’t even imagine all the humiliation you felt, and I did not want to be the one to have done that all to you… but it was a necessary evil.”
Her eyes narrowed and she sat up on her elbow. “Necessary evil? They threw horse dung at me, Gerhard! How could you possibly imagine how that made me feel? You can’t possibly have any idea! You took my kingdom and my family and my life, and then you decided to go ahead and take my pride as well,” she snapped, her face heating with rage
as she recalled her humiliation.
He pulled himself up on his elbow as well, and she noticed that he was dressed in a tunic complete with a hood. He looked like a beer merchant, not like the commander of an army. “Susanna, calm yourself. It’s over now, and you have to understand that it was all for show. I think the world of you. I did all that for your happiness!”
She snorted. “Oh, yes. I could tell. I’m ecstatic. And the falling into the river? Was that also the plan?”
He shrugged and did look slightly sheepish. “Yes, but I was there to fish you out before you hit the waterfall.”
She flopped back down onto the boards under her with a thump, unable to believe this.
“Susanna, I want you for my own,” he assured her, but not in a gentle manner. His tone was deep and exasperated, tired. “This was the only way I could make that happen! You had to be put in a position where you would appear certain to have died but in which your party wouldn’t expect to find a body. That river claims several victims every year, and rarely is anyone found!” He took a deep breath, and then reached again for her face. She shrunk away from him in protest. “Come,” he cooed, “let’s not quarrel.”
“Let’s not. You nearly murdered me to help me as a friend,” she huffed sarcastically, covering her weary eyes with her fingers.
“Susanna—I have done all this to be your husband. This is the price we had to pay!” he argued.
She felt like someone had just dropped her down a very deep hole, and her mind went completely blank for a long moment before she unlaced her fingers from over her eyes, one by one. She slowly turned her head to look at him. “To be my husband?” she repeated, incredulous.
He clenched his jaw, but otherwise did not respond. His eyes looked into hers, stubbornly, as if egging her on to argue with that.
The Conquered Brides Collection Page 7
