Heidelberg Effect (27 page)

Ella’s morning had been long and painful.
The other stable boys were bolder in their taunting of her and she
had to work harder to stay out of their way. Her moment finally
came when the stable master ordered her to the castle to deliver an
armful of wood for the castle kitchen fire. He also sent her with
instructions to steal as many biscuits as she could, disregarding
the fact that her hands would be lopped off at the wrist if she
were caught. Ella gathered up the faggots in her arms and rushed up
the pathway to the castle, dodging two riders coming down the path
toward the town. She was amazed again at how little value seemed to
be placed on the lower classes in 1620. If either of the riders had
killed or maimed her, the castle would merely be compensated for
their financial loss—something along the lines of the cost of a
tavern supper, she guessed—and that would be the end of it.

Once inside the castle
kitchen, Ella realized that something had happened. Cook and the
other women were excitedly moving about and talking loudly. Since
she was supposed to be a mute, she couldn’t ask what happened—and
her understanding of 1620 German wouldn’t allow it anyway—but she
sensed that this was her opportunity and she didn’t want to waste
it. Heike ran by holding an empty kettle and Ella put her hand out.
She tried to communicate with her hands and facial
expression:
what is wrong?
Heike blurted out: “Herr Axel’s men have been
murdered in the city! Seven men slain by a warlock!”

Ella stared as the rest of
the kitchen continued its frenetic activity around her.
Why does this smell like Rowan?
she thought, as worry and tension began to build
in her chest. She dumped the wood in the basket by the fire, then
strained to understand the seventeenth century German being spoken
around her. When she heard the word
Kloster
, she felt sick to her
stomach.
Kloster
meant
convent
. It
was
Rowan!
Dear God, was this his idea
of creating a distraction? What happened to the timeline? What
happened to the bonfire idea?
Torn between
bolting for the convent immediately and going forward with her
plan, she quickly realized she couldn’t waste the opportunity the
disruption created—whatever its source—by leaving.

It was easy to slip out of the kitchen
unnoticed. Ella grabbed a basket of freshly baked scones and went
through the interior door that led deep into the castle. This time,
she didn’t hide from the voices she heard ahead. With the ruckus
over Axel’s murdered henchmen no one was interested in a simple
kitchen worker carrying a basket of muffins through the castle.
Unlike the last time, she knew exactly where she was going.

Careful not to get eye contact with anyone,
Ella straightened her shoulders and acted like she had every reason
to be walking down the great hall to the stone staircase that led
to the upstairs rooms. She saw the stairs and again found herself
praying no one would be coming down as she ascended. It was one
thing to pass her disguise off at a distance of twenty feet, but
quite another pressed face to face on a narrow stairwell.

She was only a few feet from the stairs when
a powerful hand clamped down on her shoulder and twisted her
around. She cried out and nearly dropped the basket. The man looked
closely into her face. He had a lazy eye and his mouth was full of
broken, brown teeth. It was all Ella could do not to cringe away
from his hideous face. She recognized him as one of the castle
footmen when she saw his livery and gloves.

“Wo gehen
Sie
?” he said.

Ella held up the basket and pointed to the
stairs.

“Hat Herr Axel sie
bitten?”
he asked. His tone was a little
less aggressive, Ella thought. She nodded, hoping she looked the
picture of obsequiousness. It occurred to her that this guy
probably enjoyed terrorizing the infirm but would draw the line at
getting in the way of a direct order from his lordship.

“Schnell!
Schnell!>Do not keep him waiting. MACROBUTTON
HTMLDirect Lass ihn nicht warten
!” he
shrieked. Ella turned to run up the stairs, h
er heart pounding. When she got to the top of the stairs, she
looked down the long hall.

Her plan was to hide herself in a closet or
behind a drape in order to hear something useful, then sneak out
undetected. She knew if she’d shared the details of her plan with
Rowan, he’d probably have tied her to the kitchen sink. Even though
he knew as well as she did that they had run out of time and she
was the only one who could move things forward.

She passed two closed doors down the hall.
One she knew was Axel’s bedroom. She stopped in front of a closed
set of double doors. She hesitated, holding the basket and trying
to decide what to do. She could hear voices inside. She peeked
through the gap in the hinges into the room’s interior. It was
Krüger’s office. She could see a massive desk and velvet drapes on
the wall behind it. Ella sucked in a breath. There, behind the
desk, was none other than Axel Krüger talking to the lord of the
castle, himself.

“I tell you, it will be the final crushing
blow that delivers all of Germany to us,” Krüger said.

“We have enough with Heidelberg,” Axel said.
He was slouching in a blatant pose of boredom and disrespect.

“For now, perhaps,” Krüger said, leaning
intently toward his son and lowering his voice. “But the Prince has
twisted in the wind many times and may well again on this
issue.”

Axel snorted in derision but said
nothing.

“My sources tell me he is sending Reicher to
open the market fair in ten days time,” Krüger said.

“Eric Reicher is a fool,” Axel said. “And a
papist.”

“Nonetheless,” Krüger said, “he has the
Prince’s ear.”

“I will not woo the prince’s pet dog,” Axel
said. “You have gone insane to even think it.”

“I would not ask you to woo him.”

“What then?”

“Kill him,” his father said. He spread out
his hands in a flourish as if presenting a gift to his son.

Axel was silent for a moment and then
laughed. His hand went to the hilt of his sword.

“You want me to kill him,” he said.

“Be quiet! You must tell no
one of this! When the citizens of Heidelberg see that we have
eliminated the Catholic emissary from Rome and along with him any
chance that their precious Church of the Holy Spirit will
ever
be returned to the
papists, we will be poised to claim all the territory between the
Nekker and the Rhine. They will cheer us in the streets as their
champions.”

“God’s teeth, Father, do
you really think you can be
king
?” Axel said, still grinning.
“Is that what this is about? That is a dangerous game.”

“Which is why you must tell no one until it
is done,” Krüger said. “Not your men, not your whores. And it is
why it must be you and no one else.”

So entranced was she in what she was hearing
and so focused on trying to hear the low tones of the old man that
Ella did not notice the sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs.
When she finally realized that someone was coming, she whirled away
from the door. The end of the hallway was too far to cross before
whomever was coming was upon her. Without thinking beyond the fact
that she needed to hide, she stepped through the door to the
immediate left of Krüger’s office.

The room appeared to be a vacant bedroom.
Ella, still clutching her basket of scones, stood behind the door
and watched as Dojo, the head house butler, strode by and banged on
the double doors of Krüger’s office.

“Is the kitchen making unscheduled
deliveries now?”

Ella dropped her basket at the sound of the
voice and turned to stare at the sight of a man kneeling by the
bed. She grabbed the doorknob when she heard shouts erupt from the
room next door. She looked at Christof as he slowly stood from the
bed and dusted off the knees of his corduroy trousers.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I won’t hurt
you.”

Whether he would or wouldn’t wasn’t the
issue at the moment, Ella realized. Things were happening next door
and she very much needed to be off center stage when events fully
erupted. Obviously, Dojo had brought the news to Axel of the attack
on his men. She looked around the room in desperation for a hiding
place.

“There’s always the closet, little mouse,”
Christof said with a chuckle. “I, myself, have often used it to
avoid certain members of my family.”

Without thinking whether she could trust
him—and realizing she had no choice one way or the other, Ella
grabbed her basket and ran to the closet. Without a word or a
glance, she slipped in and pulled the door, leaving a crack to look
through.

Within seconds, Christof’s bedroom door
swung open and banged against the wall. Axel filled the doorway.
Again, Ella found herself shocked by how handsome he was. His eyes
were a cerulean blue that would have been dazzling if they weren’t
so cold. He was dressed elegantly, but his sword, long and deadly,
hung at his waist destroying any illusion of fussiness. The man was
a killer, Ella reminded herself.

“He has killed three of my
best men!” Axel shouted. “And Father knew! I tell you, he is soft
in the head. He admitted that he
knew
the convent harbored the evil
spirit who killed the axe man and he did nothing! And now my men
are dead!”

Ella couldn’t understand everything Axel
said. He was ranting. But she got enough of it. The attack had been
thwarted by the convent.

He knew about Rowan. And he knew where he
was.

“That’s impossible,
Brother,” Christof said. “Calm yourself. No evil spirit killed the
axe man.
Father
had him killed.”

“Shut up, you bastard! Shut up!” Axel pulled
out his knife and waved it in the air. “I will kill everyone at
that convent. I will burn the head witch and throw her fellow
witches onto the pyre like kindling!”

Ella fought a terrible urge to burst from
the closet and run to the convent and warn them that an attack was
imminent. She knew she was sweating and her hands were shaking just
watching his display of unrestrained fury.

“Axel, be sensible!” Christof said. Ella
could see him hold out a hand to his older brother. “Even you can’t
justify killing a convent full of nuns. No matter what your past
sins are, this is a chance for you to come into the light. Come
into the full light of understanding and love that is our Lord
Jesus Christ.”

Whatever else Christof had intended to tell
his brother was lost in a terrible gurgle as Axel screamed
incoherently and launched himself at his brother, plunging his
knife into him. Stunned, Ella pulled away from the opening in the
closet door. She could hear Christof’s cries and the sound of Axel
stomping out of the room. As she listened, Christof’s breathing was
labored and then he was silent. She burst from the closet, leaving
her basket behind, and dashed down the hall.

She ran until she heard the sound of many
feet pounding up the stairs. In a panic, she again turned to the
nearest open door and stood in the shadows trying to catch her
breath. She reasoned that as soon as the hall filled with people
she would be able to escape unnoticed. She was about to leave the
room when she heard the voice of Dojo heading her way. He was
screaming.

“Someone get help!” he shrieked. “Herr Axel
has slain his brother! Get help!”

Ella heard the pounding footsteps of several
people running along the hallway. She couldn’t tell by the sound
alone if there were enough people to camouflage her escape.

Shit!
She backed into the room—
Axel’s
room—and looked around in
desperation. There was absolutely no place to hide. Not a closet,
not a trunk. Not even drapes. The desk was really just a huge table
and open underneath. If she attempted to crouch behind it, she
would be seen easily by anyone entering the room.

She had only one mad idea that might
work—although it could still get her killed—and she got the idea at
the very moment she heard the doorknob turning behind her.

Chapter Seventeen

Rowan watched the head butler march down the
hall, swinging open every door and looking into every room with his
small cadre of castle guards down the hallway. The hall was full of
people, most of them useless now that there didn’t seem to be
anybody with authority in the castle to tell them what to do. There
was just enough turmoil going on because of the attack on the
brother that Rowan had easily managed to join the throng of
servants, visiting noblemen and landowners clogging the narrow hall
to get a peek at the dead man. He was dressed as a priest but
because of his six foot three frame, the hem of his frock fell only
to mid calf. In all the panic, however, no one had given him a
single questioning glance.

He watched the butler stop in front of a
pair of heavy double doors at the end of the hall. Rowan touched
his Glock under his robe. If Ella was behind those doors, he knew
he couldn’t save her by shooting the place up before he was
overpowered, but neither could he let them just take her without a
fight. He stood silently and watched the butler jerk open the
doors. He prayed she wasn’t there, prayed she hadn’t been so stupid
or foolhardy to hide in one of the bedrooms.

Rowan tensed and put his finger on the
trigger of the pistol as the butler stood in the opening of the
doors.