Heidelberg Effect

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  “I don’t have her, ma’am,” Rowan said. “I was hoping you might.”

  Heidi sat down hard. “Where did she go?” she asked.

  “When did you see her last?”

  “I saw her the morning of the day she quit. She wouldn’t talk with me. I was very hurt. I am still very hurt.”

  “You know why Ella might have handed in her resignation? She ever indicate to you she was thinking of doing that?”

  Heidi looked momentarily panicked, as if she were about to lie but didn’t feel terribly confident in the outcome.

  “Not really,” she said, now not looking at him.

  “She never let on she was thinking of quitting and moving back to the States? That’s a pretty big decision and I thought you two were close.”

  “We were close,” Heidi said. “Good morning, Hugo!” she said brightly to a tall blond man who entered the lobby. He stood with his coat over his arm and a briefcase in his free hand.

  “Good morning, Heidi.” The man stared at Rowan as if waiting to be introduced.

  “This is Ella’s American boyfriend,” Heidi said to Hugo. “He is here looking for Ella.”

  “What happened to Ella?” Hugo asked Rowan.

  Rowan turned to him. The guy looked like he could have stepped right out of a Warner Brothers World War Two movie playing the handsome and cold-blooded Nazi lead.

  “You didn’t know Ella was missing?” Rowan asked him.

  “No. Why would I?” Hugo said, making a face.

  “You were not friends?”

  “Well,” Hugo said smiling thinly at Rowan. “If you mean were we boyfriend and girlfriend, no. One night of passion does not make for those sorts of attachments over here. I know in America an expectation of marriage follows a sexual experience. This is because you Americans are, frankly—”

  Rowan had no idea while the man was speaking that he was about to deck him. It happened so fast and with so little fore thought that it was like his fist belonged to someone else. Before the bastard could finish his sentence, Rowan hauled off and socked him in the nose and watched him drop to his knees.

  Rowan turned to Heidi who had screamed but who now, it seemed to him, was trying to hold in an attack of hysterical giggles.

  “So,” he said to Heidi. “Ella quitting came as a big surprise to you.”

  Heidi looked at Rowan and then at Hugo who was holding his nose with blood pumping out of it. She grabbed her coat from the back of her chair, punched a button on her intercom and spoke rapid German into it. She came around the receptionist’s desk and stepped over Hugo on the rug.

  “Shall we get a coffee around the corner?” she said.

  Heidi stirred sugar into her coffee and smiled at Rowan. He could see she was used to being admired and forgiven many, many times over. Her skin was so flawless, it didn’t look real.

  “Hugo lied about sleeping with Ella,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. He had to admit to not feeling wonderful when the bastard said he’d slept with Ella. But it occurred to him that Heidi wasn’t the last word in truth and honesty either.

  “It was because she wouldn’t sleep with him that all the trouble started.”

  “How is that?”

  “Hugo found out a terrible secret about Ella’s family at the same time she did.”

  “And when she wouldn’t sleep with him, he told her secret.”

  “Yes,” Heidi said, sighing. “It’s despicable, really. But that is men.” Hurriedly she put a hand on Rowan’s hand as it rested on the table. “But not you, Herr Pierce. I mean most men.”

  “And the secret was so terrible that once revealed, you believe it prompted Ella to quit her job and move out of the country?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And what is this terrible secret that everyone now knows?”

  Heidi poured more cream in her coffee. Rowan felt like he was witnessing a performance of some kind but he realized it didn’t mean she wasn’t telling the truth. As beautiful as she was, she might just be used to making everything a drama.

  “Ella discovered that her grandfather was hanged as a war criminal after the war.”

  Rowan whistled.

  “Indeed,” Heidi said.

  “Yeah, that would do it.”

  “In Germany?” Heidi nodded. “She had to leave. I understand that. I just wish I had a chance to say goodbye and to tell her it didn’t matter to me.”

  “But she didn’t leave the country,” Rowan said. “She didn’t pack up her apartment. She didn’t shut off her utilities. She just disappeared.”

  “I agree that is very strange.”

  “And you have no idea where she might have gone?”

  Heidi widened her eyes. “Me? No.”

  Rowan watched her for a moment and then tossed out five Euros in coins onto the table.

  “I hope I didn’t get you in trouble at the office,” he said.

  “No, no,” she said, obviously in no hurry to go. “Hugo needed what he got. If he hadn’t told the whole office her terrible secret, Ella would not have run.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, thank you, Heidi, for all your help.”

  He smiled at her and then left the coffee shop, heading back down Kirchstrasse toward Ella’s flat.

  Well, hell, he thought as he walked. Now what?

  Axel slid the bridle over the nose of the stallion and took a half step back to carefully latch the leather strips securing it while staying out from under the beast’s constantly moving feet. Dojo, his father’s personal valet and general head of household, had suggested his father have the animal gelded or perhaps used only for stud. It had been all Axel could do not to have the old man beaten for the insult. Axel thought back to how his younger brother, Christof, had pleaded to stay Axel’s hand and how Dojo had stood bravely to face his wrath. Dojo was worth ten of Christof, Axel thought to himself with disgust.

  His mind distracted, the horse’s front right hoof lashed out and missed Axel’s instep by inches. Grabbing the bridle with both hands, its barbed bit sticking out of the beast’s mouth, Axel jerked hard until he saw its mouth bleed and the eyes full of terror. A perfect animal, he thought, easing his grip on the bridle but keeping a careful eye on him. Beautiful, powerful, lethal. Not unlike himself. He put a hand up to stroke the horse’s nose but only succeeded in making it shy violently, jerking the bridle reins from his grasp as the horse wheeled away.

  Axel felt his face redden even though there was no one to witness the horse’s behavior. It stirred in him a memory, hidden far down in his heart, and the vein in his forehead began to twitch.

  Bastard, he thought, watching the horse pace the courtyard in front of the stables. He glanced around. There was no one. Whatever chores or activities had been going on when he arrived a few minutes earlier, the boys had vanished. Even that useless stable master was nowhere to be found.

  They feared him, he thought, as he slapped his gloves against his thigh, turning his back on the horse and jerking open a stall door. He glimpsed the heel end of a boot disappear around the corner of the stall and it pleased him to think of whoever it was fleeing as if he were the devil himself. It was moments like these—when he was well and truly alone—amidst all the noise and community of the castle, that he missed her the most. He couldn’t say what it was that brought the thought of her, the smell of her into his head—where it could only cause pain. And yet he never resisted the onslaught, so infrequent were the memories.

  She had never looked at him with fear. She had only adored him. He knew that and forever after he would know it in contrast to the admiration and sycophantic love he received from every other woman he knew. She had stood between him and his father. When he was a boy and couldn’t defend himself, she took the beatings that should have been his.

  He sat down on a bale of hay in the abandoned stable yard. He could hear his horse snorting and pawing in one of the alcoves across the courtyard. The horse would soon calm himself and wander away looking for his fee
d, dragging his reins before him. Axel found he didn’t care if the animal tripped over them and broke his neck. The horse brought him no joy. Not even whipping helped. It just made the horse hate him.

  Just as he had hated his father so many years ago.

  His father had forbidden his mother from going to the convent to nurse the sick during the last outbreak. Axel remembered hearing him tell her and he remembered, as young as he was, feeling relief that his mother would remain safe. When she tiptoed past his bedroom and found him awake, she sang to him until he was sleepy and made him promise not to tell.

  Christof was too little and too stupid, the province of his nursemaid. Mother was his. And they had secrets. It was a special pride to him that he and his mother shared their secrets. Secrets that would save him from all the beatings he deserved and never received. And this one last secret, kept so well by an earnest and adoring boy, that served to kill his angel mother as surely as if he had driven the dirk past the damask blouse and linen girdle into her loving, all-giving heart.

  He stood, the restlessness coming over him again, and looked in the direction of the convent. His silence that night killed her but not immediately. It took a fortnight for her to succumb to the pox and die by inches and pieces. Axel waited outside her room and prayed he would see her again and feel her arms around him again.

  When his father told Axel that his mother had died, he did it with a boot that sent the eight-year old sprawling down the hall where he was led away, weeping, by Dojo.

  Within a few years, his father knew better than to raise a hand to Axel. Teeth were not easily replaced and he needed every one he had to chew his food. Axel knew his position in the castle was de facto leader. No one questioned his power—no matter how savage or unreasonable. The so-called peace he made with his father was forged by Axel’s strength and cunning as his father weakened with age.

  But the convent and the Catholic holy women who had lured his mother to share their good works—and then survived when she could not—had yet to pay for their part in her death.

  But pay they would.

  Greta walked into the kitchen and looked around. The stonewalls, looking more like cave walls, were streaked with black where the weather had come in through the many crevices in the stone and stained the rock. It made sense that the kitchen was carved out of rock. When the oven was going—as it usually was—the room was not unbearably cold as it would have been. She saw two loaves of dough rising on a large wooden platter on top of the stove. She frowned and moved to touch the oven. It was cold. The other nuns were at prayer or doing chores. Ella was supposed to be baking the bread and had clearly let the fire go out.

  It’s like having children, she thought, not for the first time. But she couldn’t help smiling.

  “Mother?” One of the older nuns paused in the entrance of the kitchen. “Do you need assistance?”

  Greta smiled and shook her head without answering, then opened the oven door to shove kindling inside.

  The older nun entered the room. She had her hands tucked into the sleeves of her habit. “The strange girl let the oven go out,” she said.

  “Yes, she is strange, isn’t she?” Greta said, her voice calm and slow. “I love the energy she brings to us. Don’t you?”

  The woman, Sister Therese, snorted. “No one can understand her speech,” she said. “Where did you say she comes from?”

  Greta lit the kindling and poked at it to get it to catch. She examined her hands which were now smudged black from soot.

  “Lunch may be a little late,” Greta said, moving to the sink to find the bucket of clear water.

  “She doesn’t know how to do basic chores,” Sister Therese said. “That is, if she does them at all. And I have yet to see her pray with the others.”

  “It is not your responsibility to determine when our sister talks with God,” Greta said gently as she dried her hands on a clean rag.

  “I would have thought it was yours,” Sister Therese said.

  Greta grinned and took her by both her hands. “You are such a hard worker, Sister,” she said. “And the novices all look up to you. It gives me such peace to know I have you to depend upon.”

  Sister Therese blushed and tried to pull her hands away. But Greta could tell she was pleased.

  “Don’t worry about Ella, Sister Therese. She is doing God’s work right now even if she never cleans another pot for us or bakes another loaf of bread. You must believe me when I tell you this.”

  “Can she help us get Hannah back? Or any of the others? Can she prevent the monsters from coming for us at night?”

  Greta could feel the old woman’s hands trembling in her own. At the mention of Hannah’s name, she knew her brave face had slipped. While she wept most nights over the loss, she always admonished herself for having so little faith in God, especially now that Ella had come—surely a gift from Him. Now, as she saw the insecurity in this bold, strong woman who had faced death many times without flinching, Greta only saw her own failure.

  Did they all live in fear for the moment that the men would come for them?

  “I believe she can help us,” Greta said. “And it’s up to us to have faith and to not be afraid in the meantime.”

  “Are you able to do that, Mother?”

  Greta could detect no sarcasm in the woman’s question. She leaned over and kissed Sister Therese on the cheek. “On my good days,” Greta said. “The other days I just pray a little harder.”

  “Why would she want to help us? Even if she is as powerful as you seem to think?”

  “She has something to make up for,” Greta said. “Something to wash away.”

  Sister Therese pulled her hands to herself and crossed her arms.

  “As do we all, Sister,” Greta said pointedly. She smiled at the nun but waved a hand toward the door to indicate Sister Therese had other places to be.

  At the end of the third week of Ella’s life in 1620, the nightmare began.

  It started as a typical day in the convent except for being allowed to accompany one of the elder nuns and a young novice again to Altstadt. Ella knew the scuffle from the last time had been reported to Greta. When Ella downplayed it to her and had succeeded in completing the shopping expedition without further mishap, Greta began to believe she could be trusted out again.

  Ella hadn’t mentioned Axel.

  They left at daybreak, carrying their baskets of produce to trade. Ella knew that Sister Therese didn’t like her but the novice—a silly girl of fourteen—made up for Therese’s glowers by being cheerful and chatty. As soon as they were on the road and moving toward the market, the girl fell silent.

  Just like that, Ella marveled. Like turning off a switch. She wondered if the girl had a tragic backstory or was simply a product of her times when women counted for nothing and girls less than nothing. God, history sucks, she thought as she directed her own eyes to the road at her feet.

  She let Sister Therese take the lead because this allowed Ella to keep the old nun’s black form in the corner of her eye while looking around at the surroundings. Ella also thought that Sister Therese liked being the leader. Ella knew that part of Sister’s unfriendliness was because of how close Ella had become to Greta. These little communities had their pecking orders and it stood to reason that Ella had bumped someone close to the chief. She decided she would kill the old girl with kindness and make a point not to seek Greta out so much when Therese was around.

  Since her last outing, Ella had made a point of always looking over her shoulder as she walked. She was sure she looked suspicious because she did not look only at the ground as she walked. She noticed a few people crossing themselves as they passed, as though trying to ward off evil. She would have to ask Greta what that was all about.

  She nearly collided with Sister Therese when the older nun halted abruptly at the first stall and began to talk in a low voice to the proprietor, who was an old man missing both ears. He appeared to have no trouble understanding Sister Ther
ese, because he nodded his head vigorously throughout the brief one-sided conversation. When Therese handed him a handful of beets, the earth still sticking to their roots in clods, he put a slim flask of amber liquid in her hand. Ella didn’t know whether it was brandy or wine or medicine. She watched as Sister Therese tucked it away in the folds of a cloth in her basket, then nod curtly at the man before walking into the street.

  Not for the first time, Ella wondered about the benefit of accompanying the nuns on their market trips. She couldn’t speak the language—at least not this medieval version of it—and they rarely traded enough produce to fill up the three baskets they always started with.

  The closer they got to the square, the more Ella could feel the excitement and energy of old Heidelberg seep into her bones. The little novice must have felt it too, because Ella could swear the girl was moving with a bounce in her step. Ella was hoping the novice would look at her so they could share an anticipatory smile, but the girl kept her eyes down.

  A squealing pig bolted out in front of them and Ella looked up to see who was chasing it. Sure enough, a boy dressed in rags emerged from one of the shops and gave chase. She stopped to watch the boy tackle the screaming pig, wrestle it into his arms, and begin to walk toward the shop. The pig squirmed out of his hands and made another desperate bid for freedom. The boy grabbed a back hoof and dragged the pig into his arms. By this time, the boy, who was muddied and sitting in the middle of the street, had drawn a crowd of people who were enjoying the show. Ella was absolutely positive that she and Heidi had sat outside this very shop a few weeks earlier drinking chocolate martinis and gossiping as the sun faded and the evening claimed the street. She turned to see how the novice was enjoying the pig wrestling, and realized that the other two had disappeared.

  Frowning, she quickened her pace to catch up to them. How could she explain to Greta that she was distracted by a pig and lost her companions? She began to run. She looked along both sides of the street for two black forms in the shops although she knew the nuns didn’t go into shops. Ella had only ever seen them trade with stall owners, most of whom were in the square at the Church of the Holy Spirit.