“Have them enter,” she said. She turned back into the bedchamber, but not before she had warned Ferdinand. “On your head be it, Uber General.”
Gretel and Ferdinand exchanged glances. His was manfully oblique. Gretel hoped that hers was reassuring. She took hold of Ernst and bundled him through the door ahead of her. There was something of a scuffle as Otto Voigt insisted on being present too. Ferdinand, evidently wishing to avoid another scene, allowed him to stand at the back of the room between two guards. The sergeant took up his position beside his king.
The room was, or course, stupendously grand. The ceiling floated somewhere up above Gretel’s sharpest range of vision, but even so she could make out murals of cherubs and angels amid clouds and flowers, all in vivid colors and picked out with gilding. The room itself was all white walls bearing scrolling cornices and intricate plasterwork. Chandeliers dangled, as chandeliers are wont to do. The tall windows were swagged and swathed in Chinese silk. Gretel couldn’t help being struck by the singularly lovely shade of blue employed for the braiding, and decided it would look perfectly charming on an evening gown. There was no furniture at all save for the gargantuan four-poster bed at the center of the room. While the monarch reclined, everyone else was expected to stand.
Propped up against satin bolsters, a brocade coverlet covering most of him, lay King Julian the Mighty. In his youth he had been strong and straight backed, if never large. At least that youthful vigor had made sense of his name. Now, shriveled by years of ruling and managing his own squabbling family, the king was a small scrap of a man, dwarfed by his bed, his surroundings, even his little consort, who stood on his right. Next to her was the king’s aide, then his physician—a willowy man in black—and two servants, just in case. On the other side of the bed stood Princess Charlotte and the sergeant. Guards were posted at each post. While Gretel got as near as she could, Ferdinand placed himself between his monarch and Ernst. Trust was one thing; gambling with the king’s life was another.
“Your Majesty,” he began, and then clearly remembered the king’s deafness and raised his voice. “Allow me to present Detective Gretel of Gesternstadt. She has brought with her a physician.”
“What’s that?” King Julian squinted through wire-rimmed spectacles. “Defective metal, you say?”
“Gretel, Your Majesty!” Ferdinand beckoned to her to step a little closer.
Gretel did so, bowed again, and affected a sorrowful expression. “King Julian, I am distressed to see you suffering so,” she said. Loudly. “But be of good cheer, for I bring with me the answer to your woes!”
“What’s she saying?” the king asked.
His aide leaned low to the monarch’s ear and then yelled, “She is sorry for your suffering!”
“She is?”
“She has something to make you feel better!” he explained.
“Oh yes?” He nodded, looking hard at Gretel now, taking in the frothy nature of her gown, the low-cut neckline, the creamy expanse of bosom on display. A small smile tugged at the corners of the royal mouth. “Well, that would be nice,” he said.
Gretel thought it best to press on. “I understand your foot still pains you greatly,” she yelled.
“My what?” he asked, cupping a hand to his ear.
“Your foot!” she repeated, pointing.
“Oh don’t worry about that,” he continued to smile. “It only hurts if I move it.”
Gretel took a step closer to the bed. The sergeant reflexively leaped forward.
“Stand back!” he commanded, barring her way with his sword.
“Well, really!” Gretel muttered.
“It’s all right, Klaus,” the king assured him. “Let the pretty lady come here. She’s going to cheer me up, you know!” he chuckled. The queen huffed and puffed.
Gretel had a nasty feeling that the conversation was getting away from her. She distinctly heard Hans snigger. “I have with me a man with a talent like no other, Your Majesty. He will be able to take away your pain and mend your broken foot.” Here she indicated Ernst, who was standing a little way behind her.
The king flapped a hand at his aide and a servant. “Help me sit up,” he insisted. They did so with great care, but still the king winced and squawked. Once a little more upright he asked. “Who is it she wants me to see?”
“The man she has brought with her!” yelled the aide.
“What, the clergyman?” The king gave another chuckle. “No, no, my dear. I cannot marry you. Ha-ha, how quaint. She wants to marry me!”
As the king was laughing everyone present was required to join in. Gretel felt the glare of the queen upon her and noticed that she was definitely not laughing. Hans realized that he was somehow the cause of some merriment and so laughed all the louder.
“Not him, Your Majesty,” Gretel went on, stepping back to reveal Ernst. “This man! He is a physician like no other!”
“Him? The sorcerer?” The king thought this was funnier still.
“Do not be confused by his attire, I promise you his talent is for removing pain and mending broken bones. You will not find a finer fellow for fixing feet anywhere, I’ll wager.”
But the king’s mind had wandered. “Beatrice, why is there a conjurer here? Is he going to do some magic tricks?”
The king’s own physician now piped up. “Sire, you cannot even consider letting this sorcerer put his hands upon your royal personage!”
It was too much for Otto. “He is no sorcerer!” he screamed. “Ernst Arnold is a fraud. His spells are disastrous, I tell you! I have witnesses. Let me bring them forward!”
Queen Beatrice held up a hand for quiet. “Witnesses?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Their testimony will rid you of any doubt upon the matter of this rogue’s fraudulent nature.”
The king’s aide and the queen conferred for a moment. At last she nodded to Herr Voigt.
“Let the witnesses be brought in,” she said.
There was a great deal of confusion within and without, but at last two figures were bundled through the door. Gretel immediately recognized them as the baker himself, weak from laughter and still gripped by merciless chortles and guffaws, and the hirsute Herr Winkler. “Here!” Otto shouted, waving his arms in such an agitated manner that he was quickly surrounded by more guards. “These poor people will tell the truth of what it is like to bear the brunt of Ernst Arnold’s failed attempts at magic!”
Gretel groaned. Her chance to convince the royal couple to let Ernst do his stuff was slipping fast away from her.
“Psst, Ernst,” she hissed beneath her breath, though she need not have worried about the king hearing her. “Be ready!” she told him. He was worryingly distracted by the sight of his erstwhile clients, but Gretel felt she had no choice but to go on with their plan. She took a breath, aware that what she was about to do was both risky and more than a little brutal. But there was no choice. If there was no pain, there was no pain for Ernst to remove. The king must be made to move so that he was reminded of his own suffering, and then Herr Arnold could swoop, remove the agony, convince everyone of his gift, and go on to reset the bones of the royal appendage.
“Oh heavens!” she cried, turning and raising a hand to her brow. “So long without food and proper rest. How faint I feel! How unsteady on my feet! How very much as if I might swoon! There must be a Jynx upon me!” She half closed her eyes as she teetered forward, nearer and nearer the bed, twirling and dodging all the while to evade the outstretched arms that attempted to catch her as she swooned. She must fall upon that bed, even upon that very king. Nothing less would do. “I tell you I am Jynxed!” she cried, hoping that the signal she and Ernst had agreed upon would strike home. He must be ready to cast his spell at once, for if the king’s suffering was too great they would all be swept from the bedchamber before he could act and the moment would be lost.
“A Jynx!” she fair bellowed, before throwing herself in the direction of the frail, startled-but-really-quite-pleased-looking re
cumbent king.
It wasn’t a bad plan. There were elements of risk to it, true, but it was carefully thought out, with the minimum of people involved, and few variables to contend with. Unfortunately, one of the people who was not meant to be involved, and who turned out to be a large and significant variable, was Hans. Unaware of his sister’s intention of providing the opportunity for Ernst to remove pain from the monarch’s freshly provoked extremity, he saw only that his sister was about to faint on top of his king. His large, robust, big-boned, some might say heavy sister, on top of his tiny, fragile, bird-boned king. Even Hans’s brain was able to compute the likely outcome with some speed. Without care for his own well-being, or really thinking the thing through at all, truth be told, Hans hurled himself at Gretel. With a warning cry—though intended for whom it was hard to tell—he ran two paces and launched himself through the air, an airborne cleric, arms outstretched.
Through her half-closed eyes Gretel saw him coming but there was no time to take evasive action. She felt him connect with her, felt the weight of him increased threefold by the momentum of his leap, felt herself pushed through the air, away from her intended target, and down, down, down onto the marble floor. Marble has many qualities, but softness is not counted among them. There was a sickening snap! which echoed around the bedchamber, audible to all even above the general commotion and alarm that had broken out. Most did not know what it signified. Some had a rough idea. One knew precisely what it meant.
“My leg!” Gretel screamed, struggling to push Hans off her. “Argh! By all that’s holy, My. Leg!”
Hans rolled over three times, coming to a halt at the feet of the astonished Princess Charlotte. There were shouts of “The King!” “The King!” Ernst, clearly remembering he had a part to play, rushed forward, but found King Julian in no pain at all. He dithered. The sergeant screamed that the madwoman and her entourage should be dragged from the bedchamber. Ferdinand shouted—quite anxiously, Gretel later recalled—that the Fraulein was injured and was not to be moved. Hans could be heard asking if the king was all right. Gretel was in such torment that she had temporarily been rendered speechless. However, she soon found she was once again able to scream and did so with such force that all present hushed and turned to look at her. What they saw caused the princess to whimper, several people to gasp, Hans to faint, and Ferdinand to drop to his knees at her side.
“Stay calm, Gretel,” he said softly. “Don’t move.”
Gretel paused in her screaming to look at her own leg. She wished that she had not. Her skirts and petticoats had risen immodestly during her fall so that all below her knees was exposed. One leg looked very much as it should, even if the stockings were laddered and grubby. The other leg, however, was very much not as it should be, with the knee pointing in one direction, the toes pointing in the opposite, and a suspicious lump beneath her hosiery halfway down her shin. The combination of shock and pain all but overwhelmed Gretel. She closed her eyes, summoned all her strength and bellowed, “Ernst, if you value your life, Jynx!”
“Oh!” he cried, at last remembering what was required of him. He stepped forward, raised his hand, and cast a swift, silent and skillful spell in Gretel’s direction. It cut her off mid-scream. Everyone watched.
“Has it stopped hurting?” Ferdinand asked.
“Yes!” she said, as amazed as everyone else. “I feel no pain at all.”
Queen Beatrice peered down at her. “None at all?”
“Not a twinge,” Gretel assured her, sitting up as best she could. Ferdinand took hold of her so that she could lean back against him.
Ernst shook his head. “Try not to move around,” he said. “I still have to set those bones.”
“Can you do it?” the queen wanted to know.
“Oh yes, if someone could bring me two short wooden planks, some plaster of Paris—or clay if you have none—string, cotton wadding …” He reeled off a list of things and a servant was dispatched to find them.
“What’s going on?” the king asked, unaccustomed to having the attention focused on someone other than himself. “What’s happened to that lovely lady who was going to cheer me up?”
Princess Charlotte leaned over and took his hand. “She’s having her leg mended, Papa,” she told him.
“By the sorcerer?” he asked.
“Yes, Papa.”
“Yes, indeed,” said the queen. “And if his bone setting is as good as his pain numbing, then we shall permit him to attend to the royal foot!”
Gretel allowed herself to rest limply in Ferdinand’s arms.
“That was quite a fall,” he said to her quietly.
“All part of the job,” she said. She wanted to enjoy being held by him, even if he was someone else’s fiancé. She felt she had earned the right to a little tenderness and affection, if only for a fleeting moment. But the sorcerer’s spell was making her feel woozy, and her eyelids had become unhelpfully heavy. And then there was the laughter, for the poor baker had shifted from a short time of tittering to set off again more gustily, helplessly chuckling and then belly laughing, clutching at his sides. Hans, fearing he had missed a joke, joined in. The king followed suit, so that everyone else was obliged to guffaw and chortle also. It was to this cacophony of maniacal laughter that Gretel finally lost consciousness.
TWENTY
The royal carriage that whizzed down the broad drive away from the Summer Schloss was built for both showing off and for comfort. Even so, Gretel struggled to find a tolerable position on the fatly padded seating. The cast Ernst had so expertly applied to her broken leg was cumbersome in the extreme. While at least most of it was concealed beneath her skirts, she was unable to wear a left shoe and sported instead a ridiculous amount of swathing. She could set the foot to the ground, but not take much weight upon it, so that walking involved a cane and a great deal of limping. It was an improvement, she told herself. The first three days after she sustained the injury she had been forced to hobble with two crutches in the most ungainly and unattractive of gaits. Ernst had insisted on her staying put until he was satisfied the repairs were working well enough for her to, as he put it, gad about again. This meant that the three of them had remained at the castle until the morning dawned when her leg was declared fit to travel.
Now, as they sped through the picturesque countryside toward Gesternstadt, Gretel experienced a confusion of feelings. She had barely glimpsed Ferdinand in the last few days, and when they had met it had been in the company of others. She had twice seen—and once acknowledged with courteous greetings—his fiancée, a winsome and elegant reminder of just what might have been keeping Ferdinand from calling in to see how she was faring. In addition, Gretel had not had the opportunity to say a private thank-you and farewell to the Uber General. She told herself that it was for the best. He had made his choice, and there was the end to it. She refused to allow herself to care enough to appear lovelorn. After all, there had been nothing agreed between them. Nothing significant had occurred. No, it was too ridiculous to chase after a man, at her age, and with her standing in the region, and her professional reputation. She would bedeck herself in her finery for Herr Mozart’s concert, hold her head high, demonstrate that her pride was intact, and while she was at it remind Ferdinand of what he had let slip through his fingers.
At last the carriage slowed to negotiate the narrow streets, sauntering pedestrians, and cobbles of the little town. On Gretel’s instructions, the driver took them directly to Herr Arnold’s house. As they approached Ernst looked anxiously out of the window.
“Will she forgive me, do you think?” he asked Gretel. “Can she?”
“She has been informed of your imminent arrival and I would confidently put a large sum of my hard-earned money on the fact that she will be overjoyed to have you home,” she told him. “Trust may have to be rebuilt, but you have time and excellent circumstances in which to do just that.”
“I confess,” he said, brightening, “matters have been resolved so well
… I could not have hoped for a better outcome.”
“Nor a better future to offer your dear wife.”
Indeed, Gretel reflected, the couple’s fortunes had changed significantly for the better. After observing Ernst’s work on her own leg, it was agreed that he should treat the king. After a tense few hours, the monarch was up and about, hopping around on his new cast, free from pain, and very, very grateful. So impressed was he—and his queen—that Herr Arnold was appointed the new (and only) Royal Physician, on the proviso that the only magic he ever employed would be the now-famous numbing spell. Already word of this singular talent was spreading throughout Bavaria and beyond. Soon Ernst would enjoy reputation and status that far exceeded his wildest imaginings. Along with the job—and substantial and generous remuneration—went a grand suite of rooms in the west wing of the Schloss, and plans were in train to equip one of the towers as his very own office. There would be ample money to pay off any remaining debts, and of course a complete royal pardon was issued for any charges of fraud, with immediate effect.
Otto Voigt had been arrested and charged with conspiring to assault, as well as attempted murder by wolf. An unusual law, but one that carried a dire sentence. King Julian always enjoyed a nice, grisly execution, so it had taken some work on Gretel’s part to persuade him there was a better course of action. For all his lack of scruples, Herr Voigt was an accomplished sorcerer, and he alone could restore the health of the laughing baker, the hairy Herr Winkler, and all others who had suffered Herr Arnold’s blundering magic. The king was reluctant to miss out on a bit of drawing and quartering, but was finally persuaded when Gretel pointed out it would not do for the Royal Physician to have examples of his failures and ineptitude wandering about. How poorly that would reflect on the king’s choice of doctor. He grudgingly agreed, throwing in banishment from the realm. This threw up a vacancy for the position of Head Sorcerer, which Gretel quickly forbade Ernst from ever applying for.
The Sorcerer's Appendix Page 20