“And if he displays his obnoxious side to the point of you wanting to strike him—and that likely will happen—I’d advise you to not strike him, but simply leave the room. My chamber is across the hall from his, and you may retreat there if you feel threatened. And I mean that.”
“Thank you, my lord.” This time it was Heinrich.
“Follow me, Beate.” He smiled and began walking to exit the hall when Otto barreled in, panting.
“My lord, a devil prevented a witch from killing me.”
Chapter Ten
Inside the great hall, everyone—from the servers and scullions scuttling in and out of the kitchen to the chaplain seated at a table parallel to Beate’s—stared at the huffing knight, who realized all eyes were on him.
“Otto, please, sit down.” Karl walked Otto to an empty table to seat him and then waved a servant to bring food and drink. The young lord grabbed a cloth napkin and pressed it against Otto’s bloody cheek. Otto took the cloth and kept the pressure steady. By this time, Lord Wilhelm had arrived from his chamber to see what was delaying his fitting. Noticing the commotion around Otto, Wilhelm joined his brother. “What happened to you?”
Otto recounted everything. “I am not hallucinating. I have not partaken of too much drink. What the woman did to me was real and witnessed by guards in the barbican.”
“Did anyone else see the devil?” Wilhelm’s incredulousness drew looks from around the room. Mumfred reentered and joined the nobles.
“Perhaps guards on the wall walks,” Otto said. “My lords, both of you need bodyguards around you at all times.”
“Pish, Otto,” Wilhelm said. “The castle’s defenses held up just as designed. Post extra guards up top. Oh, and get one of the cottars to fish the woman out of the moat.”
“I would not do that, my lord, lest you wish the cottar dead.” The chaplain, a man named Theodore, stood. “And I would suggest you follow the knight’s suggestion about bodyguards.”
Wilhelm rolled his eyes and sighed. “Loosen your robe, priest. It’s on too tight.”
Theodore, a cherub of a man, flapped his long brown and white robes. “They are fine. What I am suggesting, my lord, is that the woman the knight described likely already is out of the moat—and angry to have been knocked in there in the first place by Krampus.”
“Excuse me?” It was Mumfred. Beate followed him to stand near the chaplain. Heinrich remained seated, surreptitiously poking duck in his mouth.
“The thing the knight described. That’s Krampus. The dark servant to Saint Nicholas. But what he’s doing out of his cave this time of year—”
“Too much red wine, Father,” Mumfred said. “Perhaps you need to skip evening Mass.”
“On the coming of the Epiphany?” Theodore walked to where Otto sat. “I think not, my lord. And that explains the woman who attacked the knight. It’s Frau Perchta. I’ve heard stories of her comings and goings in Bavaria, but never have I seen her, nor do I wish to.”
“I cannot blame you.” Otto grunted. “She was too strong to be—”
“What did her feet look like?” Theodore said.
Otto looked up, rolling his eyes back and forth, thinking. “One of them was odd, deformed, by the look of her boot.”
“Like a goose’s foot?”
“I didn’t think of it that way, Father, but it was flat.”
“My lords.” Theodore stood before the brothers and placed a hand on each man’s shoulder to huddle. “Every conceivable entrance of this castle must be fortified for the foreseeable future. At least until the Twelfth Night festivities have long passed. She won’t let up. Not until she guts and sews up whoever she’s after.”
“What?” Beate’s voice echoed around the hall.
“Wait a minute,” Wilhelm said, his irreverence slipped to concern.
“That woman we put on Hans’s horse.” Otto stood and pointed to Beate. “That girl’s friend.”
“She was murdered in such a manner, Father,” Beate said. “Her body was defiled and left on the roadside.” Beate recounted what she’d seen.
“The seamstress,” Theodore recalled. “I remember seeing her around here.” He shook his head to refocus. “Then, my dear, I regret to tell you that your friend must have done something the frau frowns upon. Perhaps she didn’t meet her quota of spun wool?”
Wilhelm arched an eyebrow. “This Frau Perchta worries about how much people sew?”
“Yes, according to the tales I’ve read. Her goose foot resembles a splayfoot that works a spinning-woman’s treadle. So perhaps she does. Or it marks that she’s some other type of being, a higher power, a spirit of nature and defender of the woodlands. And she also frowns upon people not eating fish during Twelfth Night in favor of something else. Perhaps it’s an old superstition of mine, but that’s why I requested the cooks prepare me some salmon. It was good too.”
Everyone else within earshot looked at their dinner plates holding an assortment of ravaged duck carcasses. Heinrich slowly gulped the last bit of poultry in his mouth and released the leg bone, which landed on a metal plate with a deadening thump.
“Again, just a superstition,” Theodore said.
“And this Krampus? The devil my father spoke of to us as children to scare us?” Wilhelm said. “Saint Nicholas’s brutish right hand that absconds with naughty children every December fifth to torture them? That’s the man who knocked Perchta in the moat?”
“My lord, it was no man,” Otto said. “It had hooves for feet, a tail, Horns that were part of no costume. Nothing in this world has ever scared me. Not until tonight. That thing did.”
“Then perhaps this Krampus fellow should invest in a calendar because he’s a month behind schedule,” Wilhelm said. “The Eve of Saint Nicholas has long since past. The people in the village—even a few in the castle—who dress as the beast on that night and partake in drink and merriment have put their costumes away for next year. Maybe one of them is a little overzealous or still eats off of lead plates.”
Nobody replied to the elder brother. “Now then, I’m tired of this nonsense and wish to be fitted—girl, Beate—accompany me please. Hopefully this won’t take too long.”
Wilhelm made a beeline for the exit. Beate kissed Heinrich on the cheek. “Stay in here, please. Don’t venture outside.”
“Watch out for yourself.” He looked to make sure Wilhelm had gone. “I don’t trust him.”
“Nor I.” Beate scampered to catch up to Wilhelm, but Karl waited by the exit to accompany her.
“It was real.” Otto straightened himself and walked to leave the hall. All eyes looked at him. “Whether you believe me or not.”
Chapter Eleven
The wall walk archers lit extra torches lining the castle’s front curtain wall and poked their heads between the battlement crenels to scour the moat.
“Lots of good the torches do us up here,” Franco, the castle’s burgmann and best bowman, said before spitting a gob of tobacco in the moat. “We can see shit up here but none of the shit down there.”
“Maybe the moonlight will help.” Otto, his neck and cheek wounds salved with a mix of yarrow and myrrh and bandaged in linen, gazed at a white moon illuminating the castle in a silver glow—only to be dimmed by hulking black clouds drifting across the sky.
“Let’s get on with it then,” Franco said. “Archers, draw!”
Twenty-four archers stretched across the wall walk, two to a crenel, aimed at all parts of the moat. “Lower the bridge!” Franco yelled.
The wooden door yawned to a stop and out scurried four cottars, the lowest-ranking castle employees—each with a torch in one shaky hand, a pike in the other. They spread out, lowering the torches to the moat to look for a floating body.
“Three men up here witnessed that thing whipping the hag into the moat,” Franco told Otto. “They’ve not taken their eyes
off the spot where she splashed down. She went under and did not come out.”
Vettelberg Castle was specifically built atop a massive rock surrounded by an O-shaped ditch that made for a natural moat. A mix of water and waste filled half of the twenty-feet-deep ditch, whose edges stood ten feet above the murk’s surface, making it near impossible for attackers to pull themselves up and out. Even if they managed to escape on the castle’s side of the moat, they had only ten feet of rocky space to maneuver, nowhere near enough room to queue forces.
The cottars, whose duties included removing waste from the moat when the stench became too powerful, now dipped their heads uncomfortably close to the watery filth, hoping, praying they could somehow see a body that could be pulled out with pikes.
“Could she have swum around, maybe snuck out on another side of the castle?” Otto said.
“We’ve been watching all sides of the castle—we’d have seen her,” Franco said.
“Then she’s down there.”
One cottar, dressed in a ragged tunic not warm enough for the cold, handed his torch to a fellow flunky, who dropped his pike to hold two torches. The first cottar stuck his long pike into the moat, poking around, jabbing for the hag.
“Work your way right to circle the castle,” Franco called to them. “We’ll keep watch on the areas you’ve covered.”
They wordlessly acquiesced and continued their dirty work.
“If your men saw the hag fall into the moat, then they certainly saw what sent her there,” Otto said.
Franco, watching the cottars while addressing Otto, knew not to be flippant with the giant knight for fear that doing so would mean joining the hag at the moat’s bottom.
“This devil-man with the chain, yes—he turned tail and retreated for the forest. We’ve not seen him since.”
“Do you believe me? Do your men believe what they saw?”
“My men witnessed something that was somehow bigger than you whip that witch into that mire. I can’t say what exactly they saw because I wasn’t present. I don’t doubt that you saw a man covered with furs.”
“Then why the antlers, the horns?” Otto said.
“I’ve got something!” one of the cottars yelled, sparing Franco from having to answer.
“What is it?” the burgmann said.
“A body, it must be!” answered Fritz, the cottar whose pike touched on something soft and lumpy. While his long weapon had a spear tip, it also featured a sharp hook curved toward the wielder. Fritz fidgeted the hook to snag clothing or a rib or a sturdy body part.
The young cottar gulped when the mass jiggled the prodding pike tip. The three remaining cottars joined Fritz. Two held torches while the third man used his pike to help Fritz hook and haul.
The hook caught hold of something.
“Got it,” Fritz said. Maybe I looped the hook under the armpit? he thought. He tightened his grip and stepped backward, straining to lift the mass to surface.
Fritz inhaled, his jaw trembling. Whatever he’d snagged squeezed the pike’s shaft and jerked it into the moat. The other men saw him lurch forward.
“Don’t be such a bed wetter!” Fritz heard the jibe from above. “It’s an old woman! Lift her, damn it!”
“Maybe it’s a snake,” Fritz said. The cottars noticed a quiver in his voice. “Yes, a snake has slithered around the pole, upset that I’m taking away its dinner.”
The torchlight illuminating where the pole breached the murk showed only slight ripples as Fritz tried easing up his catch. Then the pole spasmed.
“It’s alive!”
The archers—a few of the nervous ones, anyway—released arrows into the moat.
“Hold your fire!” Franco said, and then to the second pike-wielding cottar, “Help him!”
The second man dropped his weapon and grabbed part of Fritz’s pike. Now the two men played tug–of–war with the unseen. But both felt the bending and crunching of wood, and then they fell backward, bringing with them a broken pike, the spear and hook snapped from the shaft.
She exploded from the moat and corkscrewed to send filth in every direction, to repulse whoever it hit. She eyed the cottars at her apex and threw the pike’s blade into Fritz’s diaphragm. He collapsed, grotesquely gasping, while the other three cottars retreated across drawbridge for the castle’s protection. Perchta landed opposite the castle, next to Fritz’s writhing body. She glowered at the bewildered archers aiming at her. Brown sludge oozed its way down her face’s wrinkles, filling them like water down dry river arteries.
“Fire!”
Arrows flitted toward her throat and stomach, but she was too quick and bolted toward the forest.
“Your castle will fall!” she shrieked. And was gone.
The archers looked at where their arrows had accidentally finished off Fritz and couldn’t comprehend how quickly the old woman had moved.
“Raise the drawbridge!” Franco ordered.
Every guard, regardless of their stations along the wall walks or in the castle proper, turned toward the commotion.
The monster had counted on that. He hid in a grove near the castle’s side, where the darkest shadow had been cast, and ran the moment the guards glanced toward the sounds of a screaming woman bent on destroying Vettelberg.
Chapter Twelve
“Try not to touch me.”
“Trust me, my lord, I’m trying not to.” Beate used an ell rod to approximate the lengths required to size Lord Wilhelm’s outfit for his brother’s wedding.
“Your friend already measured my breeches and surcoat, so I imagine the tunic will not be much different.”
“It should not, my lord.” Beate recorded the measurements on parchment, trying not to feel Wilhelm staring at her the entire time they were in his bedchamber. His personal servants had layered his bed with an array of lace, silks, velvets and furs.
“Can you stitch the baron’s coat of arms onto the surcoat? In gold lace?”
“I’ve done similar work with less expensive material.” As much as Beate abhorred being so close to Wilhelm, she appreciated the warmth of his chambers, alight with candles on tabletops and hanging lanterns. The castle’s hallways provided no sanctuary from the cold, and she imagined Lord Karl’s chambers offered similar comfort.
She wrote down a few more measurements and said, relieved, “I have everything I need, my lord.”
“You have my mother’s preferences regarding materials, some of which you see in this room. Do not get ideas about swiping any of it, as we have accounted for everything and will compare it with the amount of material you use and the remaining scraps. Your friend did such a splendid job with the baron’s wardrobe that he gave her a fox-fur coat. So generous, the baron.”
That explains that, Beate thought. “If it is all right with you, my lord, may I begin the actual sewing tomorrow after fitting your brother?”
“That’s fine. You may take up in the deceased seamstress’s shack. We’ve cleared out everything. You might be able to sleep in an actual bed this evening and for the foreseeable future. Gisela was destined for that until her mishap.”
Beate stood, her contempt unveiled. “She was murdered, my lord—births of certain people are mishaps.”
Wilhelm backhanded her, and before she could recover, he pushed her against the stone wall and moved his ungloved hand up her dress, caressing her bare thigh. He whispered into Beate’s ear, “It’s my understanding Gisela didn’t object to this treatment. Now leave.”
He backed away and pointed to the door. Flushed, she hastily packed her sewing kit, grabbed the ell rod, and unlatched and pulled open the heavy wooden door. Karl stood in his chamber’s open doorway and took notice of a distraught Beate stumbling out.
“Please, come in.”
She rushed past him, tucked her sewing kit and ell rod under her arm, and covered her face wit
h her hands to cry. He shut the door.
“I think I know what happened.” Karl stood on his bare feet, his chain mail removed, wearing a sleeveless gray linen tunic.
“Your brother.”
“Yes, it’s been known to happen. And I wish it hadn’t.” He stood behind her and gently laid his hand on her bouncing shoulder.
“My lord, I’ll lose memory of it if I work—at least I’ll try. May we please?” She faced him, her red cheeks slicked with tears.
Karl placed his other hand on her, as if holding her steady. “No.”
“I’m sorry?”
He squeezed her shoulders and pushed her backward, forcing her toward his bed. She turned to see it layered with nothing but blankets—no fabrics. Karl lifted and plopped her on the bed, her sewing kit bouncing next to her. He slithered atop her, forcing her legs to splay with his knees.
“I’d have preferred Wilhelm to have behaved, but urges get the better of us more times than not.” He kissed up and down her neck, forced his hand up her dress and cupped her breast. He covered her mouth with his other hand to stifle the expected scream.
In between kisses and licks: “I’m surprised Wilhelm made advances. You’re not really his type. Gisela, though, so innocent the first time—I regret being away for as long as I was, unable to enjoy her one last time. But you, my dear, will suffice. Tell Heinrich of this and you will die, as will he—in the end you’re peasants, disposable and easily replaced.”
Beate’s thoughts varied from knowing why Karl had donned a simple tunic—she could feel his throbbing manhood brush against her as he grew aroused—to realizing one of these two cads likely was the father to Gisela’s dead child. She also knew she would not be raped.
Although his weight effectively pinned her, she felt around with her right hand and skimmed the leather top of Gisela’s sewing kit. She thanked God she hadn’t tied it shut, and snuck her fingers between its folds. She flipped it open as Karl licked her lips. Her fingers danced over what they desired: a long bone needle. She slid it out and clenched it and boosted herself up with her elbows to return Karl’s kiss, surprising him.
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