Escape from the Past (4 page)

“Juliana, make haste,” the maroon-clad woman said. “It is late.” Despite her words, she kept chatting with the beautiful blonde. But Juliana straightened and grabbed her sack. She stepped behind the wide-hipped woman, her head bent.

At last, the two women stopped talking. The blonde looked at me and nodded ever so slightly while Bero had lowered his gaze as if he were counting his crops.

“I thought you wanted to be a squire,” I said, staring after the three departing women. “The way you act, nobody will ever know.”

Bero looked at me as if he wanted to attack. “What makes you the master asudden? You show up out of nowhere, talk like an outlander and now you want to tell me how to become a squire. You don’t even
know
the Lord.” Bero spat into the dust. Without a word he grabbed an armful of carrots and slipped across the path to talk to the man selling bread.

Another customer showed up, an older man in tattered robes who looked like a servant. Unsure what to do, I repeated what I’d heard.

“One Heller for ten leeks, fifteen carrots or five onions.”

The man nodded and asked for all three. I counted them out and was about to collect when Bero pushed past me and grabbed the coins. Within the hour, our buckets emptied to a handful of roots.

Neither of us spoke as we walked back to the hut. It was true, I thought. I didn’t have a clue, but I also noticed that Bero was way too demure to impress the fancy lords. I’d read enough
about the feudal class system and knew that lords couldn’t care less what their serfs were up to, except providing all the goods so that the lords lived like kings.

“By the way, who’s that young girl with the brown eyes? She’s hot. She your girlfriend?”

Bero frowned. “How’d you get that idea? She wasn’t sweating. What’s a girl…friend?”

“I don’t mean warm, I mean…” I offered, but Bero looked ticked off again. I’d have to explain
hot
girls later. “A
girl
friend is someone you like a lot. A lover. I saw her winking at you and you two whispered like you had some big secret.”

Bero sighed and shook his head. “Lackwit. She’s my sister and handmaiden to Lady Miranda. She hates it, but we have no choice. At least she has enough to eat and learns a few things. She might find a husband.”

I decided to ignore the lackwit for now, whatever that was. “Who’s the other woman? The blonde with the pretty mouth?”

“Lady Clara. She’s married to a blind knight.”

I shook my head. This world was getting weirder by the second. Nothing made sense.

“What do you mean the way I act?” Bero said. They’d arrived at the hut and stashed baskets and bread on a shelf.

“I mean I don’t know much about this squire thing,” I said. “But how are you going to catch their attention if you constantly duck and hide? You’ve got to do something that makes them interested in you, gets their attention. Something good.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t know. Tell me more about squires. How does it work?”

“You find a knight and serve him. You study horse and sword, learn to fight and then, maybe one day, you’re a knight, too.” Bero’s eyes looked dreamy all of the sudden. His mouth, pressed thin in stubborn defiance most of the time, had turned into a half smile as if he were already living as a knight. “I practice when I have time.” He rummaged in the corner and
returned with a stick shaped into a crude sword.

“That knight guy we saw, Lord Werner, looks like a cool dude. You should go talk to him.”

“Ha,” Bero said. He walked across the tiny room, wielding his sword in a mock attack. “He’s the Lord. You don’t
talk
to the Lord,” he jeered. “You do his bidding.” He stopped in mid-air. “What is a cool dude?”

I tried a grin. “Something like a nice man.” Bero didn’t seem to think it was funny and resumed wielding the stick. “What about your sister?” I continued. “Maybe she can put in a good word for you with her lady.”

Bero kicked the straw that covered the floor of the hut. “Lady Miranda is vile. Juliana would fancy serving someone else. She really wants to come home, but
Mutter
doesn’t allow it.”

“What’s wrong with your mother?”

“Nothing,” Bero barked, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. “
Heiliger Wendelin.
You don’t understand how it is.”

Holy who,
I thought. “Right,” I said instead, suddenly angry. I’d been thrown in the middle of a downtrodden miserable life…game with no idea how to get myself out of the mess. And here I was giving advice. What I needed was time alone—away from annoying Bero. “I need air,” I mumbled and headed for the door.

Deep in thought, I wandered down the path. A dozen customers sat in the courtyard of the
Klausenhof.
The heavenly aroma of roasted meat wafted across. Man, I was hungry. And I didn’t have a dime. Wait a minute. I remembered my wallet. It was still in my back pocket and contained twenty Euros my mother had given me for the weekend. I shook my head. They wanted Heller and not Euros.

I stuck my hands in my pockets, making contact with my watch. The wristband had broken, but someone may give me a few coins. What if they arrested me instead? I glanced at myself. I was looking more and more like Bero, my T-shirt gray and my
formerly white Nikes covered in dust. Still I had to look weird and totally out of place. I swallowed the saliva and kept walking.

The road narrowed and climbed. Above me the castle loomed. I’d take a closer look. Distract myself. Maybe I’d missed some sign of how to end the game. The path got steeper and I began to pant. On the south side, right below the castle, more huts squatted against the mountain. That had to be Rimbach. Except for the church, the houses looked like shacks a strong wind would flatten. I ignored the few villagers working in their gardens and headed uphill.

The path grew steeper and I noticed one of the two towers. They looked impossibly high as if they could pierce the clouds above. I shivered. There was supposed to be a restaurant and parking lot to my left and a gate along the path, inviting tourists to pay an entry fee to see the ruins. There was no such thing—just perfect castle walls and vertical cliffs.

I kept walking, the trail now so sheer that I had to lean forward to keep my balance.

“You, there, state your business.” The guard had appeared out of nowhere and rammed a spear into the ground, barely missing the tips of my shoes. The man squinted. He was clad in chainmail and a leather vest. His visor-less helmet didn’t fit well and compressed his cheeks upward, giving him the appearance of a chipmunk. Despite the threatening figure, I had to suppress a grin. But when I saw the man’s eyes, I lowered my gaze.

“Sorry, sir, I was lost. I didn’t mean to…” I looked past the guy toward the humongous castle, the two towers and the keep. I’d never felt smaller in my life.

The guard zeroed in on my shoes and whistled. Another sentry approached through a door in the wall.

“This lad is
lost,
” the first guard said. “Unlikely tale. Take note of his outlandish robes, the boots. He speaks a foreign tongue. And what respectable man other than a ruffian has hair like that?”

“Ugly.” The second guard drew his sword. “He looks suspicious, an escaped prisoner perhaps. We shall seize him for questioning. The Lord will know what to do.”

I watched in horror as the tip of the blade made contact with my chest.

I tried leaning away from the sword, but the thug held me by the arm. I felt the metal through the thin fabric. It would be easy to slice through my T-shirt and skewer my heart. I remembered the riders in the forest, their cruel eyes and the ease with which they’d attacked the bleeding man. What had possessed me to wander up here? Bero was back in the village. He wouldn’t have helped anyway.

“Get one of the squires and a chain,” the first guard said. “I’ll keep him secure.” His partner nodded and raced off. I stood unmoving, trying to ignore the steel on my chest and the armorclad paw on my bicep. The clip clop of horses became audible. I tried to see who was coming, but I was too afraid to move near the unyielding sharpness. Men’s laughter and what sounded like animated chatter grew louder. Horses neighed and snorted. I remained frozen, heart pounding in my ears, having trouble getting enough oxygen. Any second I’d pass out like a girl. They’d call me a wimp which would definitely make me lose the damn game.

The guard ignored me and stared over my shoulder. I thought of my comment to Bero on how to speak up to the Lord. It had been easy to say. Bero would laugh at me now.

“What seems to be the matter?” a voice called from behind.

“My Lord.” The guard bowed his head. “We caught a suspicious intruder, a probable spy. We await your orders.”

“He came from yonder.” The second guard who’d returned with a huge sour-looking youth pointed in the general direction of Bornhagen.

“Then there is no better time than now, say I. Turn him ‘round.”

The guard yanked me to face the group. Not ten feet away towered one of the largest horses I’d ever seen. Its humungous
head swung back and forth as if it were proud of the armored breast and nose shields. On top soared Knight Werner whose piercing blue eyes searched my face. For a moment, the world retracted into stillness. I felt my knees wobble.

Any moment now they’d cut off my head. Hadn’t Bero said the Lord would kill me? Yet, the Lord of Hanstein neither showed anger, surprise nor fear. Nobody spoke as I stood pinned between the guards, their hands iron cuffs on my arms. I smelled them, their unwashed bodies and filthy hands. I wanted to leave the game. Return to the safety of my former life. Now! I sucked air. My room might as well have been on the moon. Werner’s men waited, probably ready to charge on command.

“Your name is Nerds,” Werner finally said. The blue eyes were unsettling.

I stared up in surprise. “I’m Max.”

“Then what is the odd script on your robe? Are you a ruler’s son?” He pulled his sword and pointed toward my chest. I kept my eyes on the tip of the blade when I remembered. The right side of my T-shirt had a kind of logo showing the word
Nerds
underneath a crown. Despite the filth, the printed word and image were clearly visible. Bero hadn’t noticed because he probably couldn’t read.

“I…it is a fashion where I come from,” I stumbled. I wanted to kick himself, having opened the door to more disaster. Werner’s knights broke into chuckles.

Werner retracted his sword. “Most interesting. Tell us, you come from where?”

“A distant place, My Lord,” I said, attempting to buy time.

“I’ve traveled afar, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem ten years ago.” Confidence radiated from the knight’s voice. “You speak like a foreigner. Are you on a quest?” Werner’s expression was still more curious than suspicious. A glimmer smoldered in his eyes as if the blue had been turned into gas flames.

“You could say that. It is a quest of sorts.” I stopped, but the
Lord of Hanstein had not moved a muscle. “It’s difficult to explain, My Lord…” I racked my brain, but nothing smart came to mind.

Thirty pairs of eyes stared at me as I tried grasping for some idea. But my mind had turned to mush and I lowered my head. I thought of the dungeons I’d read about in history class, dark holes filled with rats, without ventilation, water or light. People were thrown in and dragged out barely alive or dead within months. I’d even seen the dungeon in the ruins of this castle, overgrown with grass and without a ceiling. It surely looked quite different right now. I’d disappear and nobody would have the faintest idea where I’d gone. Game over. Would I actually die or would I find myself back at my desk, having lost the game? My arms burned from the guards’ grip and I still felt the sword tip on my chest. That was no game.

The knight had remained quiet, watching me. A horse in the back whinnied in obvious impatience, so close to its stall and something good to eat. Werner’s men remained silent—waiting.

Werner finally waved at the sentries. They let go abruptly and I stumbled. “
Willekomen
at Hanstein, Max Nerds. Join us. We shall talk about your travels. What say you?”

Kicking the mighty horse in the flanks, Knight Werner von Hanstein and his entourage squeezed through the outer wall. I waited. Maybe I could quietly disappear. But then, maybe this was the way to win the game and get out of this nightmare. Besides, the huge squire watched me in silence, ready to pounce in case I made a wrong move.

“Make haste,” the guard waved. “I need to lock.”

I rushed past him into the bailey and the outer lawns of Hanstein. I felt the eyes of the big squire burn into my back. I was locked in now. The knights were crossing underneath the raised portcullis, the main gate, into the courtyard. I hurried after them and looked around in amazement.

Horse barns and pens with chickens, goats and pigs lined the
bailey. A maid dressed in a washed-out linen dress, her head covered with a grayish cap, emptied a bucket of slop into the pigpen.

I’d been here before during the annual medieval festival when people dressed up in period dress. I remembered tents and booths with curry sausages, fried potatoes and roasted almonds. It had been way cool to visit as a tourist. The Hanstein ruins were supposed to be one of the best in Germany.

My breath caught as I passed into the courtyard. It was hard to believe. Before me stood the most splendid castle, a stronghold of carved rocks, shaped into magnificent buildings and towers. I swayed, feeling lightheaded. I couldn’t believe it. Not really. Yet, here I was. In a game, I didn’t understand. In a castle I knew as twenty-first-century ruins.

A dozen squires had taken hold of the horses and led them away. The men, Werner in the lead, entered a huge building. That had to be the great hall, a giant medieval dining room. The mean-looking squire impatiently waved at me to follow the men before turning toward the stables. Happy to get away from the grump I rushed inside.

Pine torches, held by cast-iron loops, blazed and smoked, hiding the twenty-foot ceiling under a layer of fog. Man-sized flames burned in the giant fireplace. The Hanstein crest was painted above, three left-facing black moons on a white shield topped with a knight’s helmet and a golden crown. Murals and tapestries covered the walls. The narrow windows barely made a dent to brighten the massive space. Werner’s men settled on half a dozen tables. They shouted and laughed, their voices echoing booms.