[Tempus Fugitives 01.0] Swept Away

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  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.

  16

  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.

  “What are you doing here, Fraulein?” the butler said with obvious surprise.

  “Herr Axel?” Ella’s voice answered.

  Shit! Rowan thought. He pushed roughly past two servant boys who were trying to see inside.

  By God, they would all go down fighting if they even laid a finger on her!

  Rowan moved to the open doorway. The guards standing there lowered their weapons and were looking inside.

  Ella was sitting demurely in the center of the large bed.

  Completely naked.

  “You will wait a long time for Herr Axel, I’m afraid, Fraulein,” Dojo said, snickering, and staring at Ella’s full breasts on display for everyone to see. He turned and dismissed the guards. “Keep checking the other rooms,” he ordered. “I will see to the Fraulein.”

  Oh, hell no, Rowan thought, as he barged into the room. He heard Ella gasp and pull the duvet up to her chin. Nice, he thought. For me, she covers up.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Dojo said to Rowan. “Get out at once!”

  “Okay, now I’m gonna shoot your skinny ass in about ten seconds,” Rowan said as Ella hopped off the bed and ran between them.

  “Nein! Nein!” she said. She turned to Dojo, and said, “Mein Bruder ist ein Dummkopf.”

  Dojo looked at her and then at Rowan. “He speaks a foreign tongue,” Dojo said.

  “No, he speaks gibberish,” Ella said. “He is mentally impaired.”

  Dojo did a slow up and down of Ella’s naked body as she stood before him. He watched as Rowan reached out and took her by the arm.

  “Take him and leave at once,” Dojo said to Ella, his voice heavy with resignation. “Herr Axel is in exile. You would do well never to return. Tell his other whores.”

  Ella turned to collect the clothes she had sloughed off seconds before he opened the door.

  “Immediately!” he shouted, and Ella ran from the room without her clothes, dragging Rowan behind her.

  Twenty minutes later, outside the castle walls, she walked quickly toward the convent wearing Rowan’s robe. Rowan, dressed in his peasant shirt and pants, walked one step behind her. They walked silently since they knew that speaking English could get them instantly killed by anyone who happened to overhear, but also because Ella knew that Rowan was absolutely fuming.

  As soon as they got into the convent kitchen, she turned on him: “I had it handled, Rowan. You need to work on your control issues.”

  “And you need to work on how fast you’re able to get naked.”

  “I thought you liked that particular skill set of mine.”

  “I can’t believe you’re trying to be funny,” he said, daggers in his eyes. “You know how close you came to being raped today? If I hadn’t been there? And don’t tell me you would’ve talked him out of it.”

  “It would’ve been bad,” Ella admitted, settling on a kitchen stool and massaging her sore bare feet. “But it would’ve been better than being hanged in the courtyard.”

  Greta came into the room and made the sign of the cross.

  “God is blessing us beyond my power to understand why,” she said. “But I fear our protection is at an end.” She turned to Ella. “Did you hear about the men your husband killed today saving our novices?”

  “I did. It was the whole reason I was able to sneak in and get the intel we need.”

  “You found out something?” Rowan said with surprise. “Something useful?”

  “For starters…” Ella turned to Greta. “Axel killed Christof today. I saw it. And then he ran like hell. I guess there’s still some kind of law in Heidelberg he fears?”

  “Christof is dead?” Greta gasped.

  “Yes, and that’s bad,” Ella said, “but it’s bought us time. And that’s good. They know about you, Rowan.” She turned to him. “Axel may yet risk coming here for vengeance.”

  “First things first,” Rowan said. He sat down next to her.

  “You mean my intel?” Ella said.

  “I was going to say, beat your ass, but I guess we could hear what you found out first.” He scooped her off the bench onto his lap and she wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “Sorry,” she murmured into his neck. “I just thought it would be better my way.”

  “How many times am I gonna hear that throughout our marriage?” he said in a low voice, but he kissed her neck. She felt his arms tighten around her. They sat quietly, holding each other.

  “Sorry, Greta,” Ella said, pulling away first.

  “No, please,” Greta said. “I understand completely. It has been a tense day for us all.”

  “The girls?” Rowan asked.

  “Alice’s hands are cut deep but nothing that won’t heal,” Greta said. “Ceci is fine.”

  “And emotionally?”

  “You saved them, Marshal,” Greta said. “They both know, if not for you, they would be at the castle now or dead.”

  “What happened?” Ella asked.

  “A bunch of Axel’s goons tried to take the girls when we were heading to the goat pasture.”

  “You were carrying your gun?”

  “What’s the point of having it if I’m not gonna carry it?”

  “Good point, I guess.”

  Greta twisted the hemp rope around her waist and bit her lip as she looked at the two. “Christof dead and Axel gone?” she said softly. “I cannot believe that is possible.”

  “Believe it, Greta,” Ella said, reaching out to touch her friend’s hand. “I think your problems just got handled and we didn’t have to do a thing.”

  “I cannot believe it,” Greta repeated.

  Later that night, Ella and Rowan sat in bed talking in hushed tones. They had barely made it to the bed before they were ripping each other’s clothes off, such was their urgency to connect and forgive, to love and get release after their day of risk and terror. Rowan was rougher with her than he had ever been before. His caresses seemed more possessive. Ella understood. He had been afraid, too.

  Later, as they lay entwined on the rough pallet of their bed, she kissed his hands and placed them on her breasts.

&nbs
p; “I’m sorry, Rowan,” she said.

  “I’m telling you, Ella. I have faced down mobsters with AK-47s that didn’t scare me as much as seeing you buck naked in that asshole’s room.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have gone off and let you think I was on for the midnight bonfire.”

  “Damn right you shouldn’t have.” He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her. “And I need you to promise me right now, Ella, that you won’t ever do something that stupid again. Promise me that you’ll never go your own way because you think convincing me is just too much trouble.”

  “I promise.”

  “I mean it, Ella.”

  “I mean it, too, Rowan.”

  “Shit,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”

  “You say the sweetest things.”

  He gave her a sly look. “Come ‘ere and I’ll show you a few sweet things, too.” He grabbed for her and she squealed when they both tumbled from the bed to the floor.

  “Shhhhh!” she said, trying not to giggle. “We’re in a convent, for heaven’s sake! Show some decorum.”

  “You sure showed plenty of that today and more.”

  “You need to hear what I found out today.”

  “Yeah, I’m in a big ass hurry, myself,” he said, reaching for her.

  She grinned, then leaned over and kissed him. They looked into each other eyes for a moment. “I love you, Rowan,” she said.

  “We haven’t done this part yet?”

  “No, we have not.”

  He kissed her. “I love you, too, beautiful. I thought that went without saying.”

  “I don’t want it to go without saying.”

  “I love you, Ella.”

  They kissed. And Ella sank onto the bedclothes they’d dragged down to the floor.

  “It’s almost over,” she said. “Just a few loose ends and the hard part’s done. We are coming down the straightaway.”

  “Yeah,” he drawled, propping himself up on an elbow again and leaning over her to pull her hair away from her face. “I just hope the finish line ain’t booby trapped.” He leaned down and began a kiss that would not be stopped any time soon by conversation.

  Axel held the carving knife to the woman’s throat and pressed. He waited until the blood appeared at the tip of his knife before lifting the blade from her skin. He looked at her husband, surprising himself that he had not heard the man’s anguished cries before now, so focused had he been on his task.

  “Well?” he asked. “Does your allegiance to the Mother Superior transcend your care for your wife’s life?”

  The woman quivered and wept. She squeezed her eyes shut against the strong likelihood that she was about to meet her creator. Axel’s hand never wavered.

  “She asked me to help the boy get a position at the castle,” the man said, his eyes full of terror. “If…if he could do the job, and I saw that he likely could. That is all, mein Herr, I swear it!”

  “Where did this boy come from? There are no boys living at the convent.”

  “She told me he was a relative. A nephew from the country. An addlepate. I beg you, mein Herr.”

  Axel hesitated. He hated not to finish what he started. But the wench was fetching. He withdrew his knife and before he looked up to see the relief die on the husband’s face, he shoved her into the arms of his aide, a brutish man with no nose.

  “Bring her,” Axel said. “She will be pierced tonight in more ways than one.”

  Laughing at his own wit, he swung up onto his horse and turned its head away from the keening, pleading man he left in the courtyard of the pub.

  The balance had been restored to Axel’s life an hour ago when his father’s messenger had arrived at Axel’s favorite Heidelberg whorehouse to say that his brother lived and his father needed him to return to the castle. He tried to remember why he had felt the need to flee in the first place. Clearly even the attempted murder of a brother was an inconsequential crime for a man of Axel’s station.

  So, the hag had planted her spy in his house, had she? Axel thought of the crescent moon he had carved on the head nun’s arm and how she never even flinched. He smiled at the memory. It pleased him to see a woman fight back. They so rarely did.

  “Okay, Ella, so what did you find out?”

  “I uncovered a plot that will put both Axel and his Pop behind bars or worse.”

  “Before you tell me the details, what kind of evidence do we have to back it up?”

  Ella was silent.

  “You weren’t thinking of testifying about what you heard, I trust?”

  “You’re funny.”

  “So you heard them plotting to murder someone important?”

  “Very important.”

  “But you have no proof. How do we use the information?”

  “Well, maybe when the guy shows up dead…”

  “I meant without allowing them to go through with their dastardly plan, Ella.”

  “Look, Rowan. I don’t know how we prove it or announce it to the world since that would involve us being burned at the stake hand in hand.”

  “As romantic as that sounds…” He grinned and leaned over and kissed her on the nose. “Okay, fill me in on what you found out and maybe the solution will present itself.”

  Dojo, the butler and head steward, intercepted Axel as he galloped into the stone courtyard of the castle. His lordship had instructed Dojo to send Axel to him as soon as he arrived. Dojo knew his orders did not allow for Axel to eat or unbuckle his sword. He grabbed the bridle of Axel’s horse and held it steady while Axel dismounted.

  “Your father demands to see you immediately,” Dojo said. “He says you are to gather all the castle forces to attack the convent tonight. It is known that the man who killed your men resides there.”

  Axel pulled off his gloves and tucked them into his saddle before turning to Dojo. “Does my father wish me to kill them all?” Axel asked casually.

  “Yes, lord,” Dojo said. “Everyone. He would, however, suggest the gardener be taken alive if possible so that he may burn later. For the citizens.”

  “Thank you, Dojo. Oh, by the by, I am told a wench was found in my bed chambers today?”

  Dojo hesitated, his eyes flickered briefly to the man, still mounted, who accompanied Axel. The man—one of the guards from the castle—grinned a toothless evil grin.

  “Yes, lord,” Dojo said, fear creeping into his bones.

  “And a simpleton? The size of a giant and wearing a priest’s frock?”

  From the convent. Dojo bowed his head in silence.

  “Lift your head, Dojo,” Axel snarled. “That I may look into the face of my father’s faithful servant. The traitor who allowed the bitch nun’s assassin into my bed chamber and then to escape.”

  Bravely, Dojo lifted his face to the monster’s rage.

  “Krüger and Axel are planning on murdering Prince Karl III Philip’s head Catholic dude at the monthly market fair week after next.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s a guy named Eric Reicher,” Ella said. “Earlier this year, the Prince gave the Church of the Holy Spirit exclusively to the Catholics for their use which really pissed off the Protestants in town.”

  Rowan frowned.

  “Rowan, don’t you see? This is so much better than just some whacko anti-papist trying to kill Catholics. By planning to kill the Prince’s man, Krüger has committed treason.”

  “It’s good,” Rowan said.

  “Are you kidding? It’s great. But you’re right. How do we prove it? I mean, without letting this Reicher guy bite the big one next week?”

  “Was Krüger telling his plot to only Axel?”

  “That’s right. They outlined their plot to kill the highest ranking Catholic in the country and then Krüger swore Axel to secrecy. He instructed Axel to kill the guy himself.”

  Rowan was staring out the high window in their room. “First thing we do,” he said, “is
have Axel spill the beans big-time to the world.”

  “Axel’s gone, remember?”

  “Trust me, he’ll be back.”

  “Well, okay, then how do we have him spill the beans?”

  “We don’t have him do it,” Rowan said, smiling. “We have him appear to do it.”

  “Explain please.”

  “Krüger swore him to secrecy, right? So Step One in our discrediting Axel and getting him dumped from the Daddy-Loves-Me-Best platform is to make it look like he can’t be trusted. Plus, the more people who know, the less likely Krüger will go through with the assassination.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “We have Axel tell the world his big secret.”

  “He would never do that.”

  “Perception, Ella. Remember? It’s all perception.”

  Comfortable in their belief that they now had all the time in the world, Ella and Rowan curled up in their small bed and, for the first time in 1620, slept in blessed relief from fear.

  Less than an hour after they blew out their bedside candle, the attack came.

  17

  Greta had finished her prayers and crawled into bed when she heard the hooves of many horses pounding through the garden on the rough uneven stones of the convent’s courtyard. She froze in disbelief. Assuming there was no one else besides Axel to fear, she had spent her first evening in years without bracing for the invasion she had always expected. As she hesitated just long enough to pull on slippers, she heard the rough voices of many men outside the convent walls. She grabbed her cloak and ran to the door of her chamber. Immediately a flaming torch crashed through the bedroom window behind her. Not bothering to beat out the flames, she bolted from her room and ran for the novices’ dormitory.

  “Awaken! Awaken!” she screamed as she ran down the hall, pounding on the bedroom doors of the older nuns along the way. Many were already awake. They emerged from their rooms and followed Greta to the novices’ chamber.

  Once there, Greta pulled open the door to the first bedroom. Four girls slept on straw pallets under coarse woolen blankets on the floor.