“Your name?” she said to Ella, as she stood with one hand on her hip and the other holding an empty wicker basket.
Ella shook her head and kept her eyes glued to the ground. The girl waited a moment and then touched her arm.
“Come with me,” she said. “I’ll tell Cook to inform the stable master we’ll need you in the house this morning.”
Ella hesitated. She knew that this would not end up being a good thing for her later with the other boys. On the other hand, spending more time in the castle was the whole reason she was doing this very dangerous charade every day. She followed the maid into the castle.
As soon as they entered the kitchen, Ella felt a welcoming blast of heat accompanied by a heady aroma of baked muffins. She had left the convent this morning without her usual breakfast of bread. The little maid, Heike, spoke rapid, incomprehensible German to the glowering fat cook—a mean-faced woman with a wicked wooden spoon in her hand. The cook made a grimace in Ella’s direction then said a few words to Heike before turning away.
Heike gestured for Ella to sit by the fire and brought her a plate with two muffins on it. “You’ll work here, today,” she said. “Ja?”
Ella nodded and stuffed one of the muffins into her mouth—partly to stay in character as the dim-witted stable boy and partly because they smelled amazing. As she ate, she noticed that no one left to inform the stable master of her whereabouts. She supposed it didn’t matter. She’d be beaten either way.
The kitchen was cavernous with every available bit of wall space covered with a shelf, étagère, oven or table. A half dozen other women were bustling about the room, their faces relaxed but intent. Ella couldn’t help but think these women liked their work. They had the same kind of concentrated expression she, herself, sometimes had when her work was engaging and interesting. One or two of them actually looked in her direction and smiled.
Shit, why couldn’t Greta have gotten me a position in the kitchen? she wondered, eating the last bite of her muffin.
After a few minutes, Heike led her to a large cement sink full of dirty water and a tall stack of crockery. She handed Ella a rag and pointed to the sink. Beats scooping horse dung, Ella thought. Determined to be a credit to Heike’s kindness, Ella plunged her hands into the icy water, a film of oil floating on top, and marveled once more that anyone lived past childhood in this world of dirt and bacteria. As she worked, she noticed that, unlike in the stables, the others in the kitchen ignored her. It gave her the opportunity to examine the kitchen and its workers more closely.
She could see three entrances to the kitchen. The one that she and Heike had used was narrow and came in from the outside. Another larger entrance was at the end of the room where she soon saw the double wooden doors open and a horse and cart standing outside. Deliveries, she decided. The third entrance was at the top of a short stairwell. It had a wide, arched doorway which led into the interior of the castle. As she washed and stacked the dishes—careful not to drop one since she wasn’t absolutely sure of the punishment—she watched the cook. If Ella were to slip away, it would be the cook she’d need to evade. Before Ella could put together a plan to find a way into the castle, Heike handed her a towel for her hands and motioned her to a large table where the other women were already seated.
Ella took her place at the table and was startled when Heike on one side and a plump, sweet-faced woman on the other each took her hands. Cook, at the head of the table, stood up and recited a brief prayer. She then nodded with satisfaction and a girl of no more than ten years old began ladling out a steaming meaty soup into bowls for everyone. Ella was nearly in shock with the civility of the noon meal. The mean-faced cook even patted the ten-year old on the shoulder and laughed at a comment from one of the workers.
Her bowl of soup sat in front of her. As she reached for her metal spoon, it occurred to Ella that a close examination of her hands would reveal to anyone that she was not a young boy. While not manicured, thank goodness, they were slim and feminine with a white line showing where she normally wore a gold signet ring on her ring finger.
“You are not hungry?” Heike asked, pointing to Ella’s bowl.
Great, now I’ve called attention to myself, Ella thought, as three heads turned to look at her hesitation to eat. She grabbed up her spoon and took a heaping mouthful, burning her lips and tongue before spitting it out into the bowl.
Everyone laughed, and Heike pushed a small mug of beer toward Ella. Before Ella could pick it up, she heard a shriek at the far end of the table. All the women jumped to their feet. Ella spilled her beer as Heike grabbed her sleeve to make her stand, too. Cook bunched her apron in front of her as she massaged the cloth nervously. The women stood at their places, looking down, their eyes either closed or fixated on the table.
And there, next to Cook, stood Axel. Before Ella tore her eyes away from him to study the table like the others—and pray he didn’t notice her—she couldn’t help but recognize that he had an electric charisma that thrummed about him. He was handsome, to be sure, but it was the energy that he emanated that announced his presence and made him appear bigger than life.
Sweat trickled down her back under her stable boy clothes. She prayed that if there was anything memorable about her from her two run-ins with him, it was disguised in a concealing patina of grime.
If he recognized her, she was dead.
The other women at the table were stone silent as Axel spoke to Cook in friendly and cordial tones. Twice, Ella had to force herself to remain looking at her soup bowl.
“Guten morgen, mutti,” Axel said. “Lunch smells good.”
“Has Herr Krüger eaten yet?” Cook asked meekly, gasping between words.
“No time,” he said. “I am heading into town on a very important mission for my father.”
“May I m-m-make your lordship something?” Cook said, her fear evident to all.
“Nein,” he said. “Finish your lunch. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Was this the asshole Axel excusing himself to a servant? Ella forced herself not to look to make sure it was really him.
“Nobody makes broetchen like you, mutti,” Axel said. “May I have one for my journey?”
“Of course, mein herr,” Cook said, scurrying to the cupboard. Ella imagined she could feel her own sweat dripping through her clothes to the stone floor below. She could sense he was looking at them now.
“It certainly all looks delicious,” Axel said to the table of women. No one spoke. When Cook returned, Ella heard a sound she never in a million years would have expected.
The sound of a kiss.
Axel took the bag, thanked Cook and left the kitchen as silently as he had come. When Ella looked up, she saw Cook slump into her seat on the bench, then place both hands against the table and look up at the women who were still standing. She motioned them to sit down.
“Well, that doesn’t happen very often,” Heike said, picking up her beer cup and frowning at the spot where Ella had spilled hers. “Cook knew him as a small boy, you see,” she said.
“She mothered him when his own mother died, God rest her soul,” a woman next to Ella said.
“I never knew his mother, of course,” Heike said. “But the whole castle knows what an angel she was.”
Ella ate her soup and tried not to register her understanding. She knew enough German to decipher what they were saying but to avoid suspicion she needed to keep her cover tacked firmly in place.
“Herr Krüger was bereft when she died,” said another of the kitchen workers down the table. “He went into mourning that some say he has never recovered from.”
Just then, Cook banged her spoon against the table and waved it at them. “Don’t speak of her,” she said. She looked over her shoulder at the hallway where Axel had disappeared. “It upsets him to hear her name.”
When the other women went back to concentrating on their meal, Ella turned to Heike and gave her a questioning look.
“Helga,” Heike whi
spered, keeping her eye on Cook at the end of the table. “Her name was Helga.”
Ella returned home that evening with a deep cut across her eyebrow.
“What the hell, Ella?” Rowan’s frustration at how helpless he was to protect her was pinging off him like a palpable energy. He paced the kitchen as Greta stitched up the cut with a needle and thread.
“Not helping, Rowan,” Ella said. She winced as Greta carefully put the needle through the eyebrow.
“I mean, do you do any chores there,” Rowan asked, raising his voice, “or is it all just beat the shit out of the new boy?”
“It’s a little bit of both, to be honest,” Ella said with a grimace. “Ouch!”
“I am so sorry, Ella!” Greta said, sucking in a breath.
“No, just do it and ignore me,” Ella said. “As I am trying to ignore Mr. Helpful here.”
Rowan watched Ella bite her lip as Greta worked on her. He wanted to scold her or hold her. He wanted to forbid her from returning to the castle. He tried to remember ever feeling this out of control in his life.
Greta finished and handed Ella a small glass of brandy.
“God, we’re all going to be alcoholics before we leave the seventeenth century,” Ella said. She drank it and her eyes watered immediately.
Rowan sat down at the kitchen table and reached for her hands. He rubbed them with his big, rough hands, while watching her eyes. She seemed so vulnerable, especially with all her hair cut off. Her slender, exposed neck and big brown eyes looked all the more winsome without hair framing her face.
“Okay,” he said gruffly, “what else are we doing on the Axel-the-Bastard front? A forged birth certificate isn’t as good as some kind of testimony.”
“Well,” Ella said, running her fingers through her cropped hair and fighting off a yawn. “Funny you should say that. I was thinking of creating a secret diary where Axel’s mother confesses that she took a lover. Her name was Helga, by the way. Unfortunately, it turns out Helga was illiterate. I thought all nobility during this time could read and write.”
“Helga was Krüger’s concubine before he married her,” Greta said. She put away her sewing kit.
“Yeah, I found that out.”
“You’re being careful about eavesdropping, right?” Rowan said. “I mean, a stable boy listening at keyholes is pretty suspicious.”
“I don’t have to obviously snoop, Rowan. Today I worked in the kitchen nearly the whole day. The staff talks about her constantly. Krüger was obsessed with her. You would not believe the gossip in that place.”
“Okay, so no diary. Plan B?”
“We need a live person who’ll testify that Helga had a lover at the same time she was with Krüger. I figure the midwife who delivered Axel would be perfect.”
“How the hell are you going to do that?” Rowan said.
Ella held up her iPhone. “I thought we could use the video function on this to record Helga confessing that Axel is her love child with the nefarious troubadour Herr Klein.”
“That is literally the most asinine idea I ever heard of.” Rowan shook his head and walked to the window to see if anyone was coming down the road. He stood with his back to them.
Greta opened a small vial of salve, dipped her finger in it and lightly dabbed at the wound over Ella’s eye. “You know she is deceased,” Greta said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ella said. “I’m going to play the part.”
Greta squinted at Ella and frowned. “Helga was blonde.”
“I can make a blonde wig good enough for my purposes. Trust me, nobody will be looking that closely anyway.”
“The midwife still lives in the village,” Greta said, stoppering the vial and frowning at Ella.
“I know.”
“She is a hopeless drunk.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“I think you must have been very good at your job back in your own time,” Greta said with a smile.
“You know? I wasn’t, really. Just average.”
“Maybe you needed to believe in the job.”
Ella touched a finger to the stitches above her eye. “Maybe I did,” she said.
Later in the middle of the night, after Rowan had fallen into a troubled sleep, Ella went to the kitchen for water. Greta was already there, standing by the cistern with the dipper in her hand.
“Great minds,” Ella said, and Greta smiled as if she understood.
“How are things with your husband?” Greta asked as she handed Ella the dipper.
“You say that without any trace of irony at all.” Ella said.
“You mean, because of the way you became his wife?”
“Yeah, Greta, that’s exactly what I mean. Being backed into marrying me is hardly the same as wanting to marry to me.”
“Every night it sounds very much like it is a real marriage.”
“Okay, you know I always like to encourage even your weakest attempts at humor, Greta.”
“Forgive me,” Greta said. “But I do understand. You want a real marriage.”
“Turns out, I do. One that has nothing to do with convent reputations.”
“Oh, Ella, I am so happy for you!” Greta hugged her friend tightly.
“Well, let’s don’t get ahead of things,” Ella said. “I don’t know how Rowan feels about it.”
“You really don’t? He seems the picture of a man in love.”
“Well, hoping and knowing are two different things,” she said. “If I’ve learned anything in the last couple months, it’s that.”
“At least you know how you feel. That’s an improvement over a few months ago, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s true. I know I love him. And I know I would rather die than live without him.”
She kissed Greta on her cheek, handed her the dipper and returned to bed with her sleeping husband.
The next night after dinner the three of them met in Greta’s bedchamber for added privacy. Ella brought out the wig that one of the novices had created for her. The best seamstress in the convent, young Ava had stitched together yarn, straw and fabric to create the illusion of a yellow cascade of hair.
“It doesn’t look anything like hair,” Rowan said, frowning.
“It doesn’t matter.” Ella said. “She’ll be shitfaced when she sees it. The hair is the least of my worries.”
“I know, darlin’,” he said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Okay, Greta? I want to say ‘my baby, Axel, is a bastard.’ Help me with the dialect inflection.”
“Can this possibly work?” Greta asked.
“No,” Rowan said at the same time Ella said “Yes.”
“Mein Kind, Axel, ist ein bastard,” Greta said.
“Mein Kind, Axel, ist ein bastard.” Ella put the wig on her head and handed Rowan the cellphone. “I’m not going to stand too close,” she said.
“Good idea,” Rowan said.
“Let’s do this thing.”
Greta watched Rowan with fascination as he videotaped Ella’s performance. “It is a miniature movie camera?” she asked. “And everyone owns this in your time?”
“Pretty much,” Rowan said. He showed her the screen with Ella in playback. “I gotta admit, babe,” he said to Ella. “It looks good.”
“Okay,” Ella said. She grabbed the camera. “Now for the set up. You ready, Greta?”
“I would not miss this for the world,” Greta said with a grin.
It all came down even easier than Ella could have planned it. Greta told the midwife that Ella could not speak because of a vow of silence. So Ella smiled and poured drinks for over an hour in the nearby gasthaus while Greta listened to what appeared to Ella to be a long list of complaints and general whining. Although barely fifty, the midwife looked more like eighty. Hunchbacked with fingers twisted with arthritis, her withered face told the story of a long career of helping to bring life into the world and, just as often, watching that life expire. Ella found herself feeling sorry for h
er and prayed that what they were doing would not get the old woman tortured or killed.
Ella was eager to show the midwife the video but she let Greta be the one to determine the timing. The woman needed to be drunk enough to remember what she saw but not exactly how she saw it. Too drunk and she’d pass out before they could play the video or not remember having seen it. Not drunk enough and she would think the cellphone was witchcraft.
Ella thought Greta was masterly. She spoke to the woman with great kindness and commiseration. She feigned drinking with her to appear companionable. When Ella heard Greta say the words “Krüger” and “Helga,” she knew they were getting close. Smoothly, with one hand on the midwife to restrain her should she decide to bolt, Greta leaned over and tapped Ella on the knee. Ella brought out the cellphone already powered on, placed it at eye level to the old woman, and pressed the play button.
Her reaction was unexpected. At first she watched the video as if she had been watching movies all her life. For a moment, Ella thought they might need to play it again. But before she could decide, the woman started to shriek. Ella quickly tucked the phone in her habit and melted into the shadows of the public bar. She watched Greta soothe the woman and work to put words and thoughts into her head.
Ella’s own head ached. It had been a long day of mucking out stalls and dodging kicks from the horses and the stable boys. A wave of exhaustion washed over her. She hoped Greta could finish so they could return to the convent soon, since she had to leave early in the morning to return to the castle. Every hour of sleep and Rowan’s gentle ministrations were precious to her. Finally, Greta looked over and faintly smiled. The bait was planted. Now they just needed to spring the trap.
15
It is a truth universal to plumbers as well as spies that the best laid plans always go wrong at the worst possible time. In Ella’s experience, this rang true if seven dollars of PVC piping or the lives of two hundred innocent people were at risk. No one could have predicted the event which led to the coming disaster. Who would have thought a little thing like walking down the street to put the goats in the lower pasture would derail everything?
[Tempus Fugitives 01.0] Swept Away Page 18
