“Hans,” she whispered into his ear, “whatever you do, do not give away our names.”
“Not?”
“No. My profession is not a good fit here. If we plan on returning home, with or without Herr Arnold, but with our skins intact, we must maintain the pretense Cornelius started for us. We are would-be wilderness adventurers, remember? We hired him to take us into the woods to teach us the ways of the expert hiker and camper, but we overreached ourselves and wish to remain here only as long as it takes us to recover our strength. Then we will leave. It is also crucial that we do not admit to recognizing anyone. Do you understand, Hans? Hans!”
But her brother was no longer listening to her. His mouth opened and shut but he uttered no sound. His eyes were wide with fear, and he was staring at the bar. Gretel followed the direction of his gaze and was too slow to stop a small cry escaping her own mouth. For there, seated on a bar stool, hairy chin resting on a hairy paw, was a large, ragged, brown bear. As they stared the barman refilled his tankard, and the bear drank lustily from it before wiping his mouth with the back of his paw. He belched and slammed his vessel down, nodding for another. On either side of him sat men completely at ease with their ursine drinking companion.
Before Gretel and Hans had the chance to react further, the main door opened and in from the street came a brawny man with an axe slung over his shoulder, followed by three men of short stature who entered in the midst of an argument and continued it even as the woodsman hoisted them onto barstools and ordered them drinks.
The waitress returned with the ale and set down wooden platters in front of them.
“Tell me,” Gretel asked in as steady a voice as she could muster, “that … bear … ?” She found she could not form a sensible question.
“Him?” the waitress asked, glancing up, as if there might be more than one. “You’d best steer clear of him. He’s got a bit of a temper on him. Doesn’t help that everyone still calls him Baby Bear, even though he must be thirty if he’s a day.”
Hans snorted. “He certainly doesn’t look like a baby!”
“Names stick though, don’t they?” The waitress put knives on the table. “He grew up and left home but everyone knew about the whole Goldilocks business. He never could shake the story off. Started drinking young, got in with a bad crowd.” She gave a shrug, “What can you do?”
Gretel took a swig of her ale and nodded at the new arrivals. “And those?”
“Huh, that’s posh girls for you. All very handy having seven dwarves when you’ve no one else, but the minute that Snow White married her prince and got a castle full of servants she dropped them like so many hot potatoes.”
“What happened to the other four?” Hans asked.
“Don’t know. They never came here. This bunch work with the woodsman now. He’d be on his own otherwise. Never got over Red Riding Hood dumping him to marry a wine merchant. Will you be wanting bread?”
“What?” Gretel’s mind was in a spin. “Yes. Bread, thank you.”
As the waitress went off to fetch their food Gretel and Hans sat for a moment while the hubbub and raucous laughter bounced around them. Gretel considered their situation. Not only were they in the company of career criminals, but every bit of human—or animal—flotsam and jetsam seemed to have washed up at Baumhausdorf. This was a place for those who could have no other place. All were welcome here. And all could be themselves, for none would ever tell. What better place to hide than somewhere where no one questioned your past, your deeds, or your shortcomings? All were equal, as was their need for their whereabouts to remain secret.
“I say,” Hans pointed toward a table by the window. “A card game. Stud poker, if I’m not very much mistaken. Which I don’t think I am. Or I ought not to be, at least, after all these years of playing.”
“You cannot take part, Hans. Don’t even think of it.”
“What? But Gretel, such an opportunity. I could win enough to pay for our meal, and lodgings, more than likely.”
“Dressed as a vicar?”
“Don’t vicars play cards?”
“They are not known for their gambling prowess, Hans. You start winning hands, taking money off the locals dressed as you are, and people will start to smell a rat.”
“But …”
“We cannot afford to draw attention to ourselves. I don’t think you realize the precarious nature of our situation in this place. Ah, here comes our food. Now, eat up, try not to stare, particularly at that bear, and with luck we can have our feed and return to our rooms without talking to anyone.”
The meal was passably good—hot, fresh, and plentiful. The ale was sweet and strong. After days of privations, it was a seductive combination, so that Gretel found herself tarrying, staying for another jug of ale and some steamed suet apple pudding with custard. Hans put up no objection. Gradually, the mood at the inn began to shift to something a little more robust and quarrelsome. The piano player appeared to be drinking at the same rate as everyone else, so that his playing was growing in tempo and volume as the evening progressed. The strange patrons became more rowdy, the noise in the room ever louder and more uncouth, so that soon anything near normal conversation was soon impossible.
“We should leave soon, Hans.”
“What’s that?” He cupped a hand over his ear.
Gretel got to her feet. “We should go!” she yelled, pointing at the door.
Hans nodded and got up to follow her. The room was so full by now, however, that it was not a simple matter to move through the throng, and progress could only be made with a good deal of mouthed entschuldigens and forgive-mes. Hans’s new persona went some way toward smoothing their passage. More than once a trodden-on toe that might have resulted in fists being swung was saved by the sight of the clergyman’s clothing. Gretel’s shawl was dragged from her shoulders as she pushed forward and her low-cut neckline garnered some lascivious glances. She ignored them, even smiling sweetly when she thought it might help. It seemed to take an age to get anywhere, and Hans’s attention was snagged by another game of cards. He stopped, gazing longingly at the pot in the center of the table as a winning hand was laid down.
Gretel tugged at his sleeve. “Come along, Reverend brother,” she shouted into his ear.
“But Gretel, no one would really notice me playing amid all this din. Just one little game? There’d be no need for me to tell them who you are or why you are here,” he pleaded.
“I can’t hear you!”
“I said …”
Hans took a deep breath to put the full force of his not inconsiderable lungs behind his words. Unfortunately, the piano player chose that very instant to pause in his playing, so that Hans bellowed into the sudden quiet.
“… they don’t have to know that you are a detective here to find someone hiding from the law!!”
The quiet deepened into a dark, bottomless silence, as every single pair of eyes turned to stare anew at the vicar and his voluptuous escort, and every single one of those pairs burned bright and hard with the potential for a murderous course of action.
SIXTEEN
There are times when circumstances and events conspire to bring about the downfall of a person who could reasonably protest that their fate was not deserved. When such a confluence of happenings occurs there is little the hapless person in the eye of the storm can do to change the outcome one way or another, nor can they regret what has brought them low, as they were no more in control of their destiny than a leaf caught in a whirlpool. There are also times when quite the reverse can be said: there are people who pull the wrath of all the gods down upon their heads, only to be saved from the consequences of their actions by some simple incident that fortuitously arrives without the smallest effort on their own part. Gretel later admitted to herself that what took place in the inn that night fell into this second category of adventure.
As she and Hans stood hemmed in on all sides by frowning and snarling men—and one bear—for all of whom the very idea
of “the law” triggered the urge for a violent response, she searched her mind for something to say that would rescue the situation. She even opened her mouth in preparation for such clever words of explanation as might come. None did. She tried a smile, but it cut no ice at all. Beside her, Hans emitted a little giggle, the result of too much ale and too little sense, added to by an understandable fear for his own, dog-collared neck.
One of the nearest men, whose whiskery, rugged looks were not improved by the many scars that hatched his face, voiced the question all present were, in all probability, thinking.
“Who are you, and what business have you here that concerns the law?” These last two words were so distasteful to him he was forced to spit elaborately after uttering them. Several of his fellows evidently felt the same way.
“My brother is confused …,” Gretel began, keeping her voice carefree and cheery, which was a fair feat of acting on her part. “… He is unaccustomed to ale so powerful as the one you enjoy here.”
“Confused or not his name remains the same,” Scarface pointed out. “Who is he and who are you?”
There was a chorus of ayes and speak ups and let’s have its!
Hans felt duty bound to do something. It might have been that that something was a thing of some merit, of some cunning, of some guile such as he had never shown in his life before. Or it might have been that that something was something less, something somewhat unhelpful, something somehow more Hans. No one would ever find out, for as he drew himself up to speak, tucking his thumbs in his highly respectable lapels and puffing out his stomach, he took a step back and to the side the better to address the company. Alas, there was no back and very little side to be had, so that instead he trod squarely and weightily on the unshod back paw of Baby Bear.
The great bear roared. Hans sprang forward, barreling into Scurvy Sam, who shoved him into the arms of A.N. Other Outlaw. This burly specimen of the criminal classes drew back his arm and threw a meaty fist at Hans’s head, but Hans, still off balance from all the barreling and shoving, teetered sideways and downward at that moment, landing heavily on the sawdusted floor. The punch found its mark instead in the eye of the woodsman, whereupon both dwarves leaped from their barstools to defend their friend.
The entire room fell to brawling. There being insufficient space for a private fight, the hitting spread like a contagion the length of the bar, so that soon everyone was punching or biting or throttling someone else. The pianist struck up a suitably lively tune. The barman took out a cudgel with which to defend his wares. The previous chatter was now replaced with oaths, curses, and shouts.
Gretel dropped to the floor beside her brother.
“Hans! Keep low and follow me,” she instructed, turning to scuttle on hands and knees through the lurching and stamping feet. At one point the bear picked up a hefty man and threw him out of the window. His trajectory, and the arc and length of his scream, suggested he had cleared the balustrade completely and made a speedy descent to the ground below.
“Keep going, Hans, for pity’s sake!” Gretel called to him.
They forced their way to the side door and hauled it open, standing only to slam it on the chaos behind them. But not before Gretel had glimpsed a familiar figure slipping out through the main door of the inn. A woman. Nondescript and a little plain, but unmistakably a woman known to Gretel. A woman, indeed, whom she had interviewed not more than six days back. For that woman was none other than the wife of the baker whom Ernst Arnold’s magic had condemned to a life of tormented, endless laughter.
In the sanctuary of her blissfully comfortable bed in her wonderfully empty room behind her reassuringly locked and barred-by-a-chair door, Gretel took stock. At least she and Hans had escaped the bar brawl unscathed. In fact, the fight had provided a vital diversion. Although many of the minds present at the time would have been the worse for alcohol, there were plenty sharp enough to see Gretel as a threat to their continued safety, and indeed the continued secrecy surrounding Baumhausdorf. While hangovers, indolence, and better things to do might buy her a little time, her cover was blown. She was not safe in the village, and would have to conduct her business and leave as quickly as possible. The inn did not appear to have a closing time, so that for hours after leaving she could hear fights and riotous behavior continuing. Outside her window, on the treetop street, and even down upon the forest floor itself, commotion, noise, and drunken revelry continued into the small hours. This disruption and human activity was in sharp contrast to the quiet—if uncomfortable—nights she had spent in the woods up to this point. She thought briefly of Cornelius, and imagined him sleeping peacefully in his hammock some way off.
The facts as she saw them were few but important.
First, the sorcerer was alive and looked to be in good health, despite his missing part. He had evidently set up shop as the village physician and been accepted as such into the singular community of Baumhausdorf.
Second, on their journey through the forest, she and Hans had been attacked three times, with only two sightings of possible attackers. Hans had spotted a figure he described as being a werewolf.
Third, the Gesternstadt baker’s wife was staying in the village.
Gretel examined these facts, holding them up to the light and turning them this way and that. She searched for common elements and possible corollaries. She looked for patterns and matches. She thought until her head tightened around her brow as if she were wearing in the snuggest of new wigs.
And then it came to her.
“Aha!” she cried out, sitting up and shaking her head in the gloaming of her bedchamber. “Three attacks: three sorcerer’s clients interviewed! The first remained hidden, the second covered in hair—from a distance resembling a wolf-man—and the third … the baker’s wife!”
The connection made, it stood up to close scrutiny. But why, she wondered? Why had the three victims of Ernst Arnold’s failed magic gone to such great lengths to try to stop her finding the sorcerer? Why, she asked herself, over and over, until the repeated word turned into a lilting lullaby and sent her off to sleep.
The next morning dawned freshened and bright, sunbeams shining upon a woodland refreshed by the recent rain. There was everywhere the smell of wet timber, trees, and flowers, and birds sang in a such a cheerful manner as was difficult to resist.
Gretel rose early and left Hans sleeping in his room. She wanted to conduct her interview with the sorcerer before word reached him of her presence in the village. She need not have worried that any of the drinkers of the previous night would be abroad before lunch. The wooden walkways were devoid of people, and the swineherds who tended the beasts below lay among the livestock in snoring heaps.
Gretel tied the wool shawl a little tighter around her shoulders. She had dressed her hair as modestly as she could and eschewed powder and rouge in an effort to appear more businesslike and less alluring. Though if she had judged Herr Arnold aright, he would have eyes for no other woman than his beloved wife.
She stood at his door beneath the sign declaring him to be a physician and knocked firmly. Footsteps could be heard, and the door was quickly opened.
“Herr Arnold?” Form dictated that she ask even though she knew the answer.
“Detective Gretel! Did Voigt send you?” the sorcerer paled beneath her gaze. She noticed that he had not shaken his love of lurid colors and flamboyant clothing, so he still looked very much the magician. She wondered if it were a fondness for things past, or the simple fact that a decent tailor was nowhere near, and new clothes, as she had discovered, were limited.
“He did not, and I wonder at your suggesting that he did. It was your good wife who engaged my services.”
“Evalina!” The speaking of his beloved’s name proved too much for Ernst, and he lost his composure, crumpling into copious tears.
“Perhaps we might have this conversation away from prying eyes?” Gretel asked.
He nodded, his face obscured by a large—purple—handker
chief, and indicated with a sweep of his elaborately sleeved arm that she should step inside. His office, which was evidently his home as well as his place of work, although more spartan, was decorated with the same poor taste and love of junk that had been employed for his house and magicarium back in Gesternstadt. There were differences that were entirely due to the position he held in the treetop village, to wit in place of crystal balls and wands and curious incense and jars of ingredients for magic, there were the instruments of a surgeon and bonesetter, none of which looked pleasant. A fluttering transpired to be little Jynx, disturbed from his rest, come to perform a dance of greeting about Gretel’s head before returning to a favorite beam.
“Please be seated, Fraulein,” he said, clearing a stack of books and papers from a low chair. He waited until she was sitting and then took a seat opposite on an uncomfortable looking stool. Gretel could not help thinking that Evalina would have set about adding frilly soft furnishings in a thrice. “Tell me, Fraulein, I beg you, how fares my dear wife?”
“As any widow might.” This set him to weeping again, so she went on, “She misses you terribly and is left in torment not knowing your fate, Herr Arnold. You could surely not expect anything other, given how she loves you.”
“Does she love me still, do you think?” He looked up, searching her face for honesty. “Could she? Would she, if she knew … ?”
The Sorcerer's Appendix Page 15