The Grave Robber's Apprentice

by Allan Stratton

  Angela led Hans to the wall with the crest. Its images emerged like figures from a dream: the unicorns, the zephyrs, the Latin words beneath the wreaths. He remembered when he was a boy, tracing his fingers over the carved grooves in the chest’s lid.

  “This is it,” he whispered. “But why is it here?”

  Footsteps reverberated from the cave beneath. Someone was approaching the hole in the chapel’s floor. There was no time to run. Hans pointed to a pile of goat hides in the corner. They dived underneath.

  Immediately, they heard Peter hauling himself up through the hole. He shook out his cloak. “I wondered how long before you’d come again,” he said sternly. “A few days ago, you tracked in dirt. Today, snow.”

  Hans and Angela closed their eyes tight, in hopes that he was talking to someone else. No such luck.

  “I’m talking to you,” he said. “Do you think I can’t see the melted droplets leading to those goat hides? Come out and face me.”

  Angela crawled out of hiding.

  “Where’s your friend?”

  “I don’t know. I’m alone.”

  “No, she’s not,” Hans confessed. He threw off the hides and rose to his feet. “Please don’t blame Angela. It was my idea to come.”

  “She’s old enough to think for herself,” Peter glowered. “This is my sanctuary. Why did you violate my trust?”

  “Because it holds the secret to my past,” Hans said simply. “All my life, I’ve been a stranger to myself. I came here to know who I am and where I’m from.”

  “A foolish lie. This room has nothing to do with you.”

  Hans pointed to the wall. “That crest has everything to do with me.”

  “Don’t mock me,” Peter warned.

  “I’m not. When I was a baby, a man locked me in a chest and threw it into the sea. That crest was carved in the lid of the box.”

  The hermit rocked on his feet. “You said your father was a grave robber.”

  “The one who found and raised me, yes,” Hans said. “Of my birth parents, sir, I know nothing.”

  The hermit’s eyes grew wild. “It cannot be,” he gasped. “Show me your right shoulder.”

  Hans looked to Angela.

  “Do it,” she said.

  “And quickly,” Peter urged, “before I lose my wits forever.”

  Hans tore off his coat and opened his shirt. Peter grabbed his arm and gazed at the birthmark perched upon his shoulder. “It’s the shape of an eagle,” he whispered in awe.

  “I’ve had it since I was born.”

  “Of course you have. I’ve never forgotten.” Peter draped his cloak around Hans and clutched him to his chest.

  “You were at my birth?” Hans asked in bewilderment. “How? What do you know?”

  “Yes, tell,” Angela echoed.

  Peter struggled to collect himself. “Years ago, a man sailed the sea with his infant son. He was betrayed by his brother, who’d paid the ship’s captain and mate for their deaths. The traitors killed the loyal crew in their sleep and came for the man and his boy. But the man had wakened to the cries of the boatswain. He locked his baby in a chest that had once belonged to his wife and leaped with it into the waves. For hours he held firm, but a surge snatched it from his grip and carried it away.”

  Hans could barely breathe. “What happened to the man?”

  “He was discovered on a beach, wailing like a madman,” Peter said. “His mind restored, he left the world to become the hermit you see before you.”

  Hans trembled. “Father?”

  “The very same.”

  They threw themselves into each other’s arms, and in that moment, the years of separation vanished.

  Chapter 31

  Attack

  Angela was overwhelmed by the reunion. Her heart swelled with happiness for Hans, but her insides choked with loneliness.

  Peter saw her pain. “It’s all right, child. It’s hard to share joy when it awakens grief. Your parents. Yet give me a chance and I shall be your father and mother, too, till you’re together with your own.”

  Hans and Peter opened their arms. Angela ran to them. The three embraced.

  At that moment, there was a clanging of the great hall bell and the cries of hermits racing to the chapel. “Attack! We’re under attack!”

  Peter threw open the door. Arrows were flying up from beyond the far ledge and raining down on the plateau. Six hermits scurried inside covering their heads with the tops of wine barrels. “There’re soldiers fifty yards below the ledge.”

  “To the catapult,” Peter commanded.

  The hermits dived through the hole in the floor.

  “What use is the catapult?” Angela asked. “There’s nothing to aim at.”

  “Watch and learn,” Peter said, as more hermits poured into the chapel and followed their friends down into the cave and up to the catapult beyond.

  “I need a sword and shield for the fight,” Hans said.

  “No,” Peter said. “Whatever happens, you must survive. The future of the archduchy depends on it.”

  “What?”

  “No time to talk now.” Peter grabbed the maps, bound them in two tight rolls, and slid each into a leather quiver. “These are maps of the capital, the countryside, the market square, and the palace. Keep them safe whatever you do.”

  Hans and Angela secured the quivers under their coats. Peter tossed them two barrel lids discarded by the hermits. “Hold these over your heads and follow me.”

  They raced behind Peter to the barn, arrows raining down around them. Inside, they sprinted to the stacks of wine barrels and caskets in the workshop.

  Peter hoisted a large coffin above his shoulders. “This should fit the two of you.”

  Angela leaped back. “You mean to bury us?”

  “No, to speed you to safety. Get underneath. We’ll run to the right side of the ledge.”

  Hans and Angela followed Peter’s lead. As they reached the cliff face, a boulder from the catapult sailed over their heads and disappeared into space.

  Peter flipped the coffin over. “Hop in.”

  “I don’t understand,” Hans said. An arrow plunged into the ground to his right.

  “Just do it!” Angela yelled. He did, Angela right behind.

  “Wherever you are, fear not, for I am with you,” Peter said. “I’ve lost you once and never shall again!” He shoved the coffin over the ledge. It sped down the slope.

  “The coffin’s a sled!” Angela screamed. “How do we steer it?”

  “We can’t,” Hans screamed back as they scissored between two berry bushes. To the left, soldiers on the goat paths stared agape as they whizzed past.

  Hans and Angela looked back to see a second boulder catapult high in the air. It crashed on the lip of the ledge and took three wild bounces down the rock face. On each bounce, boulders and ice shattered loose, smashing and cracking the stones and snowpack beneath them.

  The slope trembled. The heavy drifts broke free from the mountain. They tumbled earthward. It was an avalanche, carrying all before it.

  Hans and Angela had been scared of the speed of their coffin-sled. Now they were scared it wasn’t fast enough. The avalanche was gaining. It drowned their cries in its roar. To their left, soldiers and archers were carried away in massive balls of ice and snow. One ball bounced off a rock behind them and sailed screaming over their heads.

  As the barrage overtook them, Hans threw his weight against the coffin’s right side. Its back end shot left, carrying Angela’s weight with it. The coffin banked on its edge and careened right, sweeping around to the far side of the mountain, out of the path of the avalanche.

  But not out of danger. Now, as they hurtled to level ground, the snow disappeared. They slid at breakneck speed over grass and stone. Ahead, a sheer drop. They sailed over the edge and plummeted into the white-water rapids of a mountain river. The coffin spun like a dervish.

  “Hang on!” Hans shouted.

  “I am!” Angela sh
outed back.

  “I know! To me! I mean hang on to the sides of the coffin.”

  The vessel barreled downstream, far from the archduke’s encampment. The main river coursed into the great forest, but Hans and Angela came aground in a side stream.

  Hans took off his boots and hopped into the water, wading with the coffin to a clearing amid a stand of river reeds.

  “We’re alive,” Angela gasped, as Hans lifted her to dry land.

  “Yes, but what about Father and the others?”

  “They’ll be all right, Hans. I know it. Your father’s a leader.”

  “My father.” Hans lingered on the word, overwhelming and strange.

  “I know you’re worried,” Angela said. “I would be, too. But we need to concentrate. Arnulf will be after us. We have to find food, make plans. It’s what your father would want.”

  “My father. Peter. My father.” Hans pressed his palms to his temples. Panic shot across his face. “Did the maps survive?”

  Hans and Angela threw off their soaked coats and slid the maps from their quivers. Relief: The leather casings had kept them dry. Angela smoothed the map of the palace.

  Hans shook his head in puzzlement. “How could Father draw that?”

  “Perhaps he was the architect? One of the builders?” Angela guessed. “I only care that he drew it.” She pointed at the diagram of the dungeon. “My parents are likely shackled here, in the passageway between the dungeon’s torture chamber and the catacombs.”

  “But how do you plan to get into the palace?”

  “I’ll figure that out when I get there.”

  “When we get there,” Hans said. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No. Your father wants you to live. So do I. The chances of that aren’t good in the palace.”

  “They aren’t good anywhere,” Hans said. “Whatever we do, we’re safer together. Friends to the end.”

  There was a menacing growl behind them. Hans and Angela whirled around. Staring them in the face was a large hungry bear.

  ACT IV

  The Circus of

  Dancing Bears

  Chapter 32

  The Pandolinis

  “Do bears swim?” Hans whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Angela said. “The only ones I’ve read about talk and keep house. I think this one’s different.”

  The bear reared on its haunches and roared.

  “To the coffin,” Hans said. “Push it into the current. It’ll carry us away.”

  They spun to the coffin. No use. A second bear was sitting in it. Angela darted to the bulrushes on the right and ran headlong into a third. The beasts bared their teeth.

  A horn tooted from behind the bushes and a woman strode forward. She looked like a hollyhock, tall and erect atop a pair of green clogs. Red and green ruffles burst from her bosom and hips, while a mane of orange hair erupted from her head. She clapped her hands. “Naughty bambini!”

  The bears looked embarrassed.

  A round, mustachioed man joined the woman, followed by a dazzle of children. He wore a cape of black-and-white diamond patches over burgundy pantaloons and a yellow frock coat, topped by a red flap cap. High platform shoes sent him rocketing skyward like a balloon on stilts. The dozen children, multiple sets of twins and triplets in colorful rags, did a series of flips, somersaults, and cartwheels that climaxed in a human pyramid.

  “Ciao e buongiorno!” the man boomed. He bowed with a flourish. “I am Signor Pandolini. May I present my wife, Signora Pandolini. Our children: Maria, Giuseppe, and the Etceteras Pandolini. And last but not least, the famous Pandolini Circus of Dancing Bears—Bruno, Balthazar, and Bianca.”

  The bears began to fish in the river, batting trout, graylings, and chub onto the bank, where they were promptly gutted by the Pandolini children.

  “You’ll dine with us?” Pandolini inquired, taming his bushy eyebrows with the dab of a forefinger.

  “I’m terribly sorry, but we’re in a hurry,” Angela said.

  Hans coughed. “We’d be delighted,” he corrected her. “A meal would do us good.”

  “Fantastico!” Pandolini cheered. “While the love of my life prepares the feast, let me honor you with a tour of our circus.”

  Hans and Angela bundled their maps and followed Pandolini through the bushes.

  “Are these people crazy?” Angela whispered to Hans.

  “Probably, but they’ve got food.”

  “Who cares? Arnulf is after us.”

  “He has to regroup from the avalanche, first. And we have to eat. We can hardly survive on dreams.”

  The Pandolini home was parked on the dirt road beyond the bushes. It was a brightly painted cage on wheels with metal bars and a wooden yoke.

  “The padlock on the cage door doesn’t work,” Pandolini said. “The bears let themselves out to do their business.”

  “How do you pull the wagon without horses?” Hans asked.

  Pandolini wiggled his eyebrows. “Who needs horses when you have bears?”

  Angela peered through the bars. “Do you have other acts?”

  Pandolini nearly toppled over. “Do dogs have fleas?” He leaped into the cage and swept aside a layer of straw that covered a door in the wagon floor. Beneath was a crawl space, from which he tossed up props and costumes. “We Pandolinis breathe fire, swallow swords, and perform acrobatics and magic. Not long ago, we also did commedia with marionettes.”

  “Marionettes!” Angela exclaimed.

  The master showman plunged into the crawl space, his burgundy butt waving in the breeze. He emerged with a basket spilling over with tangled strings, wires, and puppet limbs. “Behold!”

  Angela’s face fell. “What happened to them?”

  Pandolini threw his wrist to his forehead and wailed. “My bambini use them to fight each other. I plead with them, but do they listen?”

  “No! They never listen!” Signora Pandolini brayed. She barged from the bushes, bracelets jangling, hands waving to the heavens.

  “Never!” Tears dripped from the tips of Pandolini’s handlebar mustache. “Last week, I blink and they toss poor Arlecchino to the bears!”

  “Because you blink, Arlecchino, he misses his ear!” Signora Pandolini reached between the bars and thwacked Pandolini on the nose with a spatula. “Idiota!” She turned to Hans and Angela. “We eat now.”

  Angela carried the basket of marionettes to the campfire. “Perhaps I could untangle them.”

  Signora Pandolini kissed her on both cheeks. “More better, you take us to your village. Introduce us to your mayor. We will perform in your town square.”

  “Or in a barnyard,” Pandolini added. “All we ask is food, shelter, and a few coins.”

  “Sadly, we’re not from around here,” Hans fibbed. “We’re a poor brother and sister on the road to visit a distant aunt.”

  Pandolini pointed to the reeds. “With a coffin?”

  “Yes,” Angela nodded. “She’s dead.”

  “Are there no coffin makers in her village?”

  Hans glared at Angela. “They died too, I’m afraid.”

  Signora Pandolini arched her eyebrows. “Where are your parents? Are they not attending your auntie’s funeral?”

  “Heavens no,” Angela improvised. “They couldn’t stand her. Nobody could. Not even us. In fact, the village plans a celebration.”

  Pandolini burst out laughing. “Fantastico. Never you mind about the truth.” He winked. “I guess your secret. You are on the run. We too have been on the run. Circus. The life of circus.”

  Pandolini motioned them to the little fire, where they feasted on bread and fish with the family. Afterward, the younger children ran off to play with the bears. The oldest, Giuseppe and Maria, stayed for a time, but as Hans and Angela spoke no Italian, they soon grew bored and wandered off as well.

  Signor and Signora Pandolini regaled Hans and Angela with tales of the road:

  “In Anatolia, Bianca did a pirouette on the high wire for the
sultan,” Pandolini enthused, stripping a fillet of fish with his teeth and tossing the head into the pot of guts his wife was boiling for a soup.

  “And in Bohemia,” Signora Pandolini said as she stirred the broth, “the emperor fainted when the children juggled axes.”

  “While swinging by their toes on a trapeze,” Pandolini added.

  Angela’s fingers flew as fast as the Pandolinis’ tongues. By the time the showman told of the time he turned a Hapsburg prince into a parrot, she’d untangled the marionettes and had the puppet Scapino dancing on a boulder.

  Pandolini clapped his hands to his cheeks. “You’ve saved them! Grazie.”

  “I’ve always dreamed of playing the great courts of Europe,” Angela declaimed in the voice of the string man.

  Signor Pandolini tossed his cap in the air. “Bravo! Bravissimo!”

  Two of the children ran up from the water, pointing and babbling. The Pandolinis jumped to their feet. Signora Pandolini put her hand to her throat. “Madre de Dio!”

  “What is it?” Hans asked.

  “Soldiers,” Pandolini said. “They scout the riverbank.”

  Hans and Angela turned to run.

  “Stay where you are!” Pandolini exclaimed with a sweep of his cape.

  “But it’s us they’re after,” Hans said.

  “Never fear. We shall hide you where even the fox dares not go.”

  “No,” Angela protested. “We won’t put your family in danger.”

  “What kind of family abandons children?” Signora Pandolini demanded.

  In a flash, they spirited Hans and Angela into the crawl space of the circus wagon. Pandolini stuffed costumes after them and covered the floor doors with straw, while his wife and children put the bears in the cage above them.

  A dozen soldiers burst through the reeds, as Pandolini snapped the broken padlock in place. The soldiers aimed their muskets at the Pandolinis’ heads.

  “Ciao e buongiorno!” The showman beamed. “I am Signor Pandolini. May I present my wife, Signora Pandolini. Our children, Maria, Giuseppe, and the Etceteras Pandolini! Last but not least, our Circus of Dancing Bears.”

  The captain eyed Pandolini with suspicion. “We’re looking for two young vagabonds.”