From a High Tower (10 page)

Just get your mind back in the book,
she advised herself.
What's done is done. You can't pour the broken eggs back into the shell. Best to just concentrate on salvaging what you can.

All very good advice, of course. Now if only she could bring herself to take it. . . .

With saddlebags packed with her new wardrobe, her rifle in a saddle holster, and Lebkuchen clearly impatient to be on the road, Giselle stood at her stirrup, waiting for Tante Gretchen to come out of her cottage. It was a beautiful day, and under any other circumstance, she'd have been overjoyed for the chance to ride out under cloudless skies, with balmy spring breezes lilting through the trees.

But given that she was figuratively crawling to the Bruderschaft to beg for their help and
hope
she was forgiven for her part in killing a man . . . well . . . part of her wanted to stay hidden with Tante Gretchen, pretending to be her niece.

That was impossible, of course. The cottage was cozy and pleasant while the two of them were getting along and while it was always possible to get away by tending the garden or hunting for mushrooms in the forest. But in winter . . . or if for some reason they had a quarrel . . . well, it wouldn't be cozy, it would be claustrophobic. Even with all the space in the abbey and her tower, sometimes
that
had been claustrophobic in winter when she and Mother were at odds.

Tante Gretchen finally came out with another, smaller bag she could fasten over the top of one of her bigger saddlebags. “Food for the journey, so you won't have to waste as much money buying things to eat,” the old woman said, handing it to her. “Don't fret. Something will turn up, I feel it in my bones.”

“I hope so,” she replied, with less confidence. Earth Masters could be quite powerful, but they weren't known for their predictive talents. Impulsively, she hugged the old woman. “I think you have literally saved my life, Tante Gretchen. I don't know what I would have done without your help.”

The Earth Master returned her embrace. “You would have managed. I have every confidence in you, even if you don't have nearly as much in yourself,” she said firmly. “Now, just keep your eyes and ears open for opportunity, and if something turns up
before
you reach the Lodge, seize it! The Good God will put something in your path, but you have to be alert for the signs he is giving you something!”

Again, Giselle was nothing like as sanguine as Tante Gretchen was, but, well, who knew? And anyway, that sounded like something Mother would have said. So she gave the old woman another hug, then mounted Lebkuchen and turned the mare's head down the path leading to the cottage, as the Earth Master waved goodbye. In a few moments, the thick underbrush and the winding of the path had hidden her and her home from view.

When the path came out on the road, there was no one in sight, which partially quieted Giselle's fears that soldiers had been set to ambush her. It was a very silly fear, of course—the four who had been sent directly to Tante Gretchen to look for Gunther had not even considered that she might be the young man in disguise—but that didn't keep it from being a very real fear.

The first village she encountered made her tense up all over, but nobody paid any attention to her, except for the handful of women who looked startled and offended at the sight of a woman
riding astride
even though she was probably less prone to showing ankles, or even (gasp!)
calves
than someone riding sidesaddle.

By the third village she felt as relaxed as she was ever likely to get, and then she could think. Lebkuchen was being very well behaved; she wondered if Tante Gretchen had had a “word” with her. It was Earth Magicians who were good with animals, and Earth Masters the best of all. Giselle had always found Lebkuchen a handful, but maybe that had been because the mare had belonged to Mother, not her. Perhaps Tante Gretchen had “explained” the situation to her in a way she understood.

I have food for a few days,
she considered, as Lebkuchen ambled along the quiet, narrow road.
Water I can get from the rivers and streams. It's probably not wise for a woman alone to take a room in an inn. So my biggest problem between here and there is where am I going to sleep? I can't ride day and night; Lebkuchen needs the rest even if by some miracle I don't.

The easiest thing to do would be to make rough camps in the forest. It wouldn't be hard; Joachim had taught her how to camp ages ago. But if she could find a farm that still had haystacks in the fields, that would be preferable. She had a distinct advantage over most travelers and gypsies and tramps; she could ask an Air Elemental to stand guard for her and wake her before sunrise so she could get out and away before the farmer could catch her.

For that matter, she could ask her Elemental allies to scout ahead and
find
a field with haystacks. Then she could wait until dark, slip in before the moon rose, and have herself a cozy little roost without anyone the wiser.

I'll do it,
she decided, and felt a good bit better. Lebkuchen would be taken care of too; the amount of hay the mare would eat overnight would be negligible to the farmer, but it would cost more than Giselle liked at a stable.

She whistled the odd little spell-tune she used to summon the friendliest of Air Elementals—those were usually, though not always, sylphs. This time she got one that
wasn't;
an odd little creature with the face of a girl and the everything else of a scarlet-feathered bird. She'd gotten Elementals like this one before, and they were a welcome sight when she needed a helper that was steady and not flighty. The bird-creature flew along beside her and listened as she explained what she needed: a farm near the road with haystacks still in the field, somewhere near where she and the horse would be at around sunset.

The bird-girl listened intently and whistled her agreement when Giselle was finished. Off she flitted, leaving Giselle only concerned as to whether or not such a thing actually existed.
Well, if it doesn't, I'll camp in the woods,
she reminded herself. It wouldn't be as nice a bed as a haystack . . .

But it's preferable to a gaol.

By the third day she had finally relaxed some of her vigilance and begun to enjoy the journey. Even sleeping in haystacks wasn't so bad; Mother had taught her how to chase away insects so she was able to burrow in and sleep peacefully until a sylph or a sprite awoke her.

And since she was, quite literally, seeing more people than she had ever seen in her entire life, even the most mundane things were entertaining. Sometimes it was all she could do to keep a straight face at some of the goings-on. Were the village beauties
really
so unaware of how absurd they looked, mincing about the way they did? Were the handsome lads not the least conscious that they acted just as absurdly? The prosperous also put on ridiculous airs, men and women both, when in fact they themselves might have done
nothing
to earn their prosperity, and had merely inherited it. Her sylphs were only too happy to flit about her, whispering tales of village life like the little gossips they were—and oh how chagrined those proud creatures would have been if they had known that the huntress riding through their town knew some of their embarrassing secrets!

This was altogether a new development, at least as far as Giselle was concerned. Then again, the nearest village to the abbey was miles away, and probably the sylphs that hung about the abbey had little to no interest in its inhabitants. The sylphs that were turning up on her journey were all local, and sylphs went where the air went. They saw and heard everything.

They probably would have told her a lot more, if she encouraged them. As it was, it was like reading a gossipy book every time she passed through a town or village.

Today, she was about to pass through her first
large
town, or rather, city, and she was definitely looking forward to it. There were things in a large town that she had never seen, only read about. Theaters, coffeehouses, street players . . . ladies in the sort of fashions she only saw in magazines . . .

Sadly, of course, things like theaters and coffeehouses cost money she was loath to spend. But street players were free, and so was watching fashionable ladies. And there were other things, like great cathedrals, and perhaps museums. . . .

Also, in a big town, she would no longer be an object of scorn or curiosity with her split skirt and riding astride. People saw much more scandalous things every day in a large enough town, and took them for granted.

It was easy enough to see her goal, the town of Schopfheim, as she rounded a curve in the road and a valley stretched out before her. Too many red-roofed houses to count, and she took a swift intake of breath at the mere thought of all those people. But it was exciting rather than daunting.

Lebkuchen's ears pricked up, as if she had sensed Giselle's excitement. Then again, she had come through big towns with Mother, and perhaps she was anticipating a nice inn, comfortable stable, and perhaps, apples.

Not this time, I'm afraid,
she thought a little ruefully, as Lebkuchen picked up her feet and moved into a faster pace.
It's going to be another hayfield for us, I fear.

W
HAT
Giselle had
not
expected was that just outside of town, there would be a great deal of commotion, with tents and some sort of display going on. Not the Maifest she had expected, but something else entirely.

Just on the outskirts of most towns and cities, and even some villages, there was a generally a sort of common field which had any number of uses, but which was always used to hold the Maifests and Oktoberfests. As it happened, her approach to Schopfheim brought her by this field. This was no collection of little beer tents and vendors, there were no games going on, and no Maypole. Whatever this was, it was completely enclosed in a wall of canvas. The wall was painted with huge banner-like scrolls with something written inside and equally huge pictures. Since the road was fairly clear, she urged Lebkuchen into a trot to get her there faster. She was nearly on fire with curiosity when she was able to get close enough to read one of the banners.

And then . . . then she was nearly on fire with pure desire. For the banner read,
Captain Cody's Wild West Show.

A Wild West Show! Her heart raced as she craned her neck hoping for a glimpse of . . . something, anything! Alas, it was all hidden behind those canvas curtains that fenced off the area. There was not so much as a feather or a spur to be seen, nothing but the painted banners displaying the wonders to be seen within. Indian attacks! Bandits! The stampede! Captain Cody, the famous sharpshooter! Texas Tom, the trick-roper! Buffalo! All things she had read about in Karl May's books, and tried to imagine, and they were here, and . . .

And the reality of the situation brought her spirits crashing to the ground, even as the people of Schopfheim streamed toward the entrance in the center of that canvas wall.
She
couldn't afford a ticket. Not if she expected to get to the Bruderschaft Lodge without resorting to theft. It was dismaying, how much things
cost
when you couldn't make them for yourself. Food, for instance. Her prize money was slowly trickling through her fingers, and what had seemed like bounty as she collected it didn't seem like so much when you found out just how much an innkeeper was prepared to charge you for food you could have cooked yourself at a quarter of the cost.

Lebkuchen's head came up as she scented other horses behind those canvas walls, and she whickered, her ears pointed forward. With a sigh, Giselle turned her away from the tempting venue.
I can't. I've run out of Tante Gretchen's food. Things are more expensive in towns. I can't keep counting on finding hayfields to sleep in. Lebkuchen would need stabling too, while I went in there, and I can't possibly afford—

“Do you want to see the wild people?”

That voice, as much inside her head as out of it, told her that one of her Elementals was nearby. She looked up. One of the sylphs—this one with white and silver butterfly wings—had just swooped in to hover above Giselle's head, eyes sparkling with excitement. She didn't know this one, but as always, the sylphs seemed to recognize her and what she was immediately.
“It is wonderful! You will like it so very much!”

Giselle took a quick look around to be certain no one was near enough to hear her talking to thin air. Traffic on the road was nonexistent for the moment; it was all one-way, heading for those enticing tents. Narrow strips of meadow bordered the road here, with trees beyond. “I don't have the money,” she said, sadly. “I'd need to pay for a ticket, and pay for a place to put my horse while I watched the show. You know that humans need money for—”

“Wait!”
The sylph dashed off. Blinking with confusion, Giselle moved her mare over to the side of the road, under a lovely green beech tree, and waited as she had been asked. What on earth could the sylph be—

“Here!”
The sylph was back, waving two scraps of paper, one in each hand, as she sped toward Giselle. For anyone else, it would just look like two bits of paper, swirling about on the wind.
“Here!”
The sylph dropped them, and hovered expectantly, as Giselle snatched them out of the air.

To her astonishment, they were tickets. One was for stabling on the show grounds, and the other—admission to all attractions and the show itself!

“But—how—” She gaped up at the sylph.

“Oh, people lose things, drop things, and are very careless.”
The sylph danced about in glee.
“It was easy! Let's go!”

She flew off, heading for the entrance, and it was obvious that she expected Giselle to follow. Not that Giselle had
any
hesitation about doing so! And Lebkuchen seemed eager enough to be with her own kind, too. Once they were within about a hundred feet of the entrance, Giselle dismounted and led her horse into the loosely packed crowd that was slowly making its way toward the entrance. There was a lot of excited chatter. She seemed to be among several family groups that knew each other and were rhapsodizing about how lucky they were for a Wild West Show to be here, at little Schopfheim. “I wouldn't care if the Maifest was put off until June!” one teenage boy proclaimed. “Think of it! Think of what we'll see!” He could hardly contain his excitement, and Giselle knew exactly how he felt.

She presented herself and her tickets to the ticket-taker at the front entrance, who, to her disappointment, was not an Indian or cowboy or frontiersman like Old Shatterhand, but was dressed in a perfectly normal suit. Well, normal for a townsman, anyway; so far on her journey, men were far more likely to wear the dress of their villages than a town-suit. He directed her to a tent immediately inside, where she surrendered Lebkuchen to a young boy in exchange for a tin tag with a number on it. Horses were tethered inside to posts with identical numbers; each post had a pile of hay and a bucket of water at it, so it looked as if Lebkuchen was going to be in good hands. She got into her saddlebags and changed out Lebkuchen's bridle for her halter so she could eat comfortably, then put her in the boy's confident hands. There were only three horses besides Lebkuchen; it appeared most people had walked here. The boy was a local lad and told her to hurry along to the main tent, as the show was just about to start.

This was . . . well, entirely new territory, so far as the size of the crowd was concerned. Villages, she was used to; she had gone with Mother on occasion to the nearest one, once Mother had deemed her powers safely in check. A town, well, that was just a very big village, and she had steeled herself to deal with them as they came along. But this . . . nothing in her experience prepared her for this.

She let the crowd carry her along the side of the biggest tent to the entrance. To her right was the canvas of the tent, to her left was a row of . . . canvas booths, she thought. They looked a little like the vendor booths she had seen at the Maifest. She smelled food, some aromas familiar, some not. She definitely heard men calling out to the crowd, though she couldn't see what they were hawking, as she was a great deal shorter than most of the people between her and the booths. But in any event, now was not the time to be distracted by minor diversions when what she really wanted was to get a good seat inside.

The side flaps of the entrance were drawn wide apart and held in place by big canvas straps; a ticket-taker eyed her ticket, but did not take it from her, as he did with some others. It smelled of animals—not strongly, but definitely the scent was there. It smelled of dust, and trampled grass. And some faint whiffs of perfume and tobacco from the crowd. She wondered why the ticket-taker had not asked her to surrender hers.

Perhaps not every ticket gives you the right to roam about the grounds?

She found herself facing an open space ringed with tiered seats. The sylph flitted by, caught her eye, and waved her to follow. A moment later she was glad she had; the sylph led her past the crowds that were jockeying for the seats nearest the entrance and to a tier of seats, still mostly empty, on the opposite side of the arena space. She climbed up the steps, glad of her divided skirt and feeling a great deal of pity for the townswomen in fashionable garb. Even those wearing humble dirndls were managing better than women encumbered by yards of skirt and tight corsets, much to the amusement of some naughty boys.

She sat where the sylph pointed: about halfway up the tier, with some children on the seats immediately below her, so her view was not going to be obstructed. Just as she settled in, a brass band at the head of the arena struck up a jaunty tune. She didn't recognize it, but then, most tunes she wouldn't anyway. Mother wasn't much for music, and Joachim and Pieter mostly knew hymns and drinking songs.

The band continued to play as people found their seats. There were vendors of food scattered about the arena, but fortunately they were mostly hawking fruit, candy, and nuts. None of those things had any aroma to them, so Giselle was able to put her hunger out of her mind and concentrate on her surroundings. The grass in the arena had been trampled flat but not yet pounded into dust. There was a low wooden barrier between the stands and the arena. The band was very colorful, dressed in bright red uniforms with a great deal of gold braid. Next to them was an entrance closed off by red curtains that presumably cloaked an opening in the wall around the arena. This, Giselle guessed, was where the performers would come from. Finally, when it appeared that no one else was going to want in, the tent flaps closed, and the band finished with a flourish.

Then there was a fanfare, a lot of strange shouting, the red curtains parted, and a man on a white horse, dressed in a white suit with a great deal of brass buttons and fringe on it and a white hat of a sort she had never seen before, galloped into the center of the arena and made his horse rear up while taking off his hat to the crowd.

“Ladies! Gentlemen!”
a man next to the brass band called through a cone-shaped object.
“Welcome to Captain Cody's Wild West!”

Captain Cody—since that was undoubtedly who this was—made his horse gallop at a furious pace around the ring, while the Captain was making whooping noises and firing his pistols in the air as the band played. He made one circuit of the arena seated—and then to Giselle's wide-eyed astonishment, somehow got to his feet, and while standing on the saddle made a second circuit as perfectly erect just as if he was standing on unmoving ground and not a galloping horse, while taking off his hat to the crowd. As he came around the second time, Giselle got a good look at him, and he would probably have been quite ordinary looking if it had not been for his costume, his long, flowing hair and his bushy moustache.

The band concluded their tune as Captain Cody somehow dropped back into the saddle and rode out through the red curtains at the far end of the tent that she could now see were held open by a couple of men. But the audience was not given a chance to catch their collective breath, as the announcer called out,
“And now, the Grand Parade March!”

Now, oh
now,
she got to see everything she had been longing to see!

The first riders through the curtains were going four abreast, at a canter. The two in the middle were wearing tan leather outfits with long fringes on the sleeves and the seams of the trousers. One wore a hat like Captain Cody's, only brown, the other wore—oh! It was a hat made from an animal—a
coonskin hat
exactly like the one Old Shatterhand wore in the illustrations! The one on the right carried the flag of the United States. The one on the left carried the flag of the German Empire.

But then, bliss upon bliss, the two outermost riders were
Indians!
They, too, were clad in leather, with fringes and some sort of decorations, and had scarlet sashes about their waists and bandoliers of bullets across their chests. They wore feathers in their hair, and instead of flags, one carried a kind of curved pole with fur wrapped around it and feathers flying from it, and the other carried a wicked-looking lance with long cloth streamers tied to it just below the lance-head.

They rode straight down the middle of the arena then split at the end, with one pair going right, the other, left.

Then came what Giselle recognized from the illustrations in Karl May's books as a
covered wagon,
the conveyance favored by settlers, pulled by a team of horses. It went right. Behind it was a small herd of the most extraordinary cattle Giselle had ever seen—their horns were enormous, stretched out to either side of their heads by two feet or more! They were kept in check by four men in checkered or tan shirts, vests, bluish trousers with leather leggings over them and round bowler hats, who herded them to the left, right past Giselle.

After that came another conveyance Giselle also recognized, a
stagecoach.
It was pulled by four horses, whose driver handled them expertly. That went to the right, so she didn't get a closer look at it.

But then, in the next moment, she was fiercely glad of the pattern, because next to enter the arena were—
a whole tribe of Indians!
Men mostly, with three women and two little boys. The men were in a motley assortment of costumes: several were bare-chested, one wore a red cloth shirt with a vest, and one wore a blue uniform coat with leather leggings. Two of them had a sort of crest on their heads, like a Roman soldier's helmet crest, made of some stiff red-dyed hair. All of them had feathers in their black hair, which had a peculiar sort of fat ridge along the tops of their heads, and all had leather leggings and soft leather moccasins. The women were not nearly as colorful; they all wore simple cloth tunics and skirts with brightly colored hems, sashes, and had shawls wrapped about themselves. The boys were dressed like their elders.