Once Upon a Crime

by P. J. Brackston

  “Well, under the bridge, presumably, there is a river.”

  “No, more water than that. A lake, perhaps.” She sat up straight now, her scrutiny of the cards over. “So, there you are. Any help?”

  Gretel attempted to recap.

  “Fingers. A stinking troll who lives under a bridge, near somewhere beginning with Per, and a lake. It’s all a bit vague.”

  “Don’t forget the tall, dark, handsome stranger.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “I promise you, it’s what I saw.”

  “Well,” said Gretel, forcing her feet back into her shoes and getting up, “unless he’s got the cats, I’m not interested.”

  The journey home was long and uncomfortable, and manageable only because of the wads of cotton Agnes had provided. They stuck out of Gretel’s precious shoes in ludicrous tufts, but at least she was able to walk. The sun was warm and before she was half a mile from the cottage she was perspiring beneath her tweed jacket, the heat provoking her dormant flea bites into a new bout of irritation. Just when Gretel was thinking that she wasn’t charging Frau Hapsburg nearly enough for all the effort she was expending, an empty cart pulled by a chestnut nag appeared from a side lane and joined the road in the direction of town.

  “Hey! Wait a minute!” Gretel hobbled after it. “Any chance of a lift?”

  The rickety vehicle was driven by a rosy-cheeked farmer Gretel dimly recognized as one of Hans’s sometime drinking companions at the inn. He smiled at her, a gappy grin that emitted a pungent blast of halitosis. Gretel reeled backward, grimly noting that this was not the breed of stranger Agnes had promised.

  “Out for a walk, are ye?” he asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Lovely day for it.”

  “Are you going into Gesternstadt?”

  “That I am.”

  “I’d be most grateful for a lift.”

  “How grateful?” asked the farmer, his grin never faltering.

  “Is there anyone around here who would do something without being paid?”

  “Would ye?”

  With a sigh Gretel handed over the smallest note she possessed, promising herself she would visit Frau Hapsburg the first chance she got to demand more money to cover the ever-mounting expenses. She clambered up beside the driver, quickly learning that the best way to avoid further assaults from his toxic breath was to refuse to be engaged in conversation. So it was that they plodded along in silence. Gretel found the pace maddeningly slow, but at least her feet were getting a rest. As they rounded a bend, she noticed movement in a small copse a little way from the road.

  Squinting against the sun, she was able to make out two figures, apparently a young couple. At the sound of the wagon the pair hastily said their goodbyes, the young man disappearing into the trees and the girl darting out onto the lane. She did not, as Gretel had anticipated, hail the cart and beg a lift. Instead, she put her shawl over her head, and walked briskly past them in the opposite direction without so much as a good-morning-how-are-you.

  The farmer tutted. “Young people b’aint got manners these days,” he said.

  Gretel was inclined to agree with him, but merely nodded, turning to watch the girl as she hurried by. The sound of galloping hooves in the distance caused her to halt. The noise grew louder. The driver steered the old mare to one side of the road and pulled her to a stop.

  “What be coming now?” he muttered.

  The noise was certainly thunderous and quite alarming. Nevertheless, Gretel was surprised to see the girl run as if the devil himself were on her heels. She flung herself into the back of the cart.

  “Hide me!” she cried. “Oh, please, you must help me. I cannot be found. Please!” The sight of such prettiness in distress was enough to melt the stoniest of hearts. The farmer signaled for her to lie down in the wagon.

  “Be still,” he told her as he flung a quantity of empty sacks upon her.

  Within seconds a regiment of king’s troops came charging around the bend. There were at least twenty of them, bristling with swords, and with such a look of urgency and ferocity about them Gretel felt quite unnerved. They hauled on their reins, bringing their sweating mounts to a skidding, wheeling halt in front of the wagon.

  “In the name of King Julian, halt!” commanded one of the most elaborately uniformed men.

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” said Gretel, piqued at having been both scared and shouted at in the same two minutes, “we have already done so.”

  “In the name of King Julian,” the soldier continued to bellow at them, “identify yourselves!”

  “There’s no need to shout,” Gretel told him.

  “Wilhelm Bruder,” croaked the driver. “A farmer of good standing, who never made no trouble for nobody his whole entire life.”

  “Gretel, from Gesternstadt. Yes, that Gretel,” she added, seeing the familiar unspoken question in the soldier’s eyes.

  “In the name of King Julian, state your business!” he demanded.

  The interrogation may have gone on in this way for some time, but into the tiny pause that followed this particular question, the quiet, harmless little space between shouting and answering, there came the unmistakable sound of a sneeze. Not just any sneeze, but a young, pretty, female sneeze.

  The troops were galvanized into action. They closed in on the cart, swords drawn. The sergeant nodded at a subordinate, who leaned in and whisked back the Hessian, revealing the trembling girl. Gretel opened her mouth to say something in defense of the frightened young thing but was deprived of the opportunity to be heroic by what happened next.

  The girl sprang to her feet and flung herself into the arms of the nearest soldier, all the while shrieking and screaming fit to faint.

  “Oh, thank heavens! Thank heavens you have rescued me! My dear father’s brave, brave men, come to save me from the heinous villains who stole me away. Oh, I feared I would be murdered horribly, or sold, or worse! Oh, my sweet heroes!” she cried, swooning into the embrace of the somewhat startled trooper.

  “Well, really!” Gretel was incensed. It was bad enough being accused of kidnapping by someone she had been prepared to help, but to be called heinous, particularly while wearing one of her favorite ensembles—it was too much.

  The farmer had become a quivering pile of jelly. He gibbered incoherently, wringing his hands and letting loose a steaming stream of urine down the left leg of his breeches.

  “Mercy! Oh, have mercy on this poor humble farmer!” He sniveled.

  “We didn’t steal her away.” Gretel attempted to be the voice of reason in the midst of such overwrought nonsense. “The girl asked us to hide her. She appeared to be terrified of you lot, and I can’t say I blame her.”

  “In the name of King Julian”—Gretel rolled her eyes—“you will show due respect and deference to the Princess Charlotte!” the sergeant yelled.

  “Princess?” Gretel looked anew at the young woman, and saw now the hooked nose, the narrow eyes, and the slight overbite that did indeed have the stamp of the house of Findleberg.

  Farmer Bruder wailed loudly and produced a stream down the right leg of his breeches.

  Gretel regarded the pale and winsome face of the princess; she took in the fervent gazes and manly stances of the soldiers; she considered the insubstantial weight of her own words—and those of the dissolving farmer—against those of the beloved eldest daughter of a king well known for his lack of compassion.

  She slumped heavily on the hard wooden seat, let out a sigh of resignation, and very softly said, “Ah.”

  The Summer Schloss, so called because the royal family had spent their summers there since records began, was a gleaming white confection of a building, a construction that had evidently been designed by whimsy, with a little help from fancy, and additional input by seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time. Frivolity stood in for symmetry. Excess replaced restraint. There were inaccessible turrets and redundant balconies. There were entrances that could not be e
ntered, and exits through which no one had ever successfully exited. The sprawling result was indeed palatial. It was also ridiculous, but no one who cared to keep his head attached to his body would dare say so. The current ruler, King Julian the Mighty, a Findleberg to his bones, enjoyed nothing more than commanding extensions be added to his favorite home—nothing more, unless you counted ordering grisly executions—and did so at the drop of a hat. Appearances would suggest that, in the preceding several decades, hats had been dropping at a profligate rate.

  Gretel had not visited the Schloss since she was a girl. On that occasion, having made her escape from the gingerbread house and after the actions of her parents had been exposed, King Julian had summoned her and her brother. In a previously unknown show of kingly concern for two of his subjects, the monarch had declared his intention to pay for the education of the youngsters, to provide them with a suitable dwelling in the town, and to see that justice was done. Gretel suspected something of a PR exercise was afoot, but the king’s motivations had never been completely clear. He may even have been moved by love, having only recently become engaged to the woman who was to become his second queen, the first having expired from her fruitless efforts of trying to provide him with an heir. Whatever his reasons, the king was as good as his word. She and Hans had boarded at the very best schools the realm could offer; on their return they had moved into the modest but comfortable house they still enjoyed; and their father had been sent to the ruby mines of Ostvergen. He had actually been condemned to death by disemboweling with boar tusks, but had had his sentence commuted after Gretel had pleaded with the king for mercy.

  She had always hoped that one day she would be a guest at the Summer Schloss again. This was not, however, how she had seen the thing going in her daydreams. She was seated in the back of the wagon, trussed up like a chicken, back to back with the pungent farmer, being rattled to bone-jarring agony by the reckless pace with which the conveyance was being hauled Schlossward by the troopers. The princess sat prettily behind one of the best-looking soldiers, her skirts trailing attractively in the breeze as his mount pranced along. Gretel feared that she herself would be forever tainted by her proximity to Bruder and could already feel a cold dampness passing between them in her direction. Her hair had fought its way out of its pins and lacquer to sprout wildly from beneath her toppling top hat. She was in no state to be presented to royalty. She drew some small comfort from the fact that she was at least well dressed.

  The cart came to a stop in the courtyard to the rear of the Schloss. Gretel and Bruder were handled roughly as they were taken inside, frog-marched along endless corridors, the splendor of the interior a blur as they progressed. Gretel tried to marry her memory of the Schloss with what she was seeing, but so much had been altered, added to, or elaborated upon, it was hard to recognize anything. There were certainly staircases where none had been before, and windows too high to see out of, and a great many more tapestries hanging from lofty ceilings just about everywhere she looked. At last they came to a pair of enormous wooden doors, which were highly decorated with intricate carvings picked out in the royal family colors of red and orange and highlighted with gilt. The sergeant spoke to one of the guards at the entrance who turned, raised his ceremonial axe, and used the hilt to knock slowly four times upon the great doors. There was a pause, and then the doors were opened from the inside and the waiting party was ordered through the portal.

  The Great Hall was not a place for a friendly encounter or intimate rendezvous. The ceilings were so high Gretel suspected they had their own weather, and were painted with lurid scenes depicting King Julian in a bewildering range of heroic escapades and poses. The room was of such dimensions it could easily have accommodated the entire population of Gesternstadt and had space left over. Marble statues of royal forebears lined the walls to left and right. The floor was also of marble, in great slabs of varying colors, creating the curious effect that one was walking on a giant patchwork quilt. At the far end of the hall were broad steps (yet more marble) leading up to a dais, upon which were positioned five thrones: one for each member of the royal family. The king sat on the largest of these, though it took Gretel some time to spot that he was there at all. It had been nearly thirty years since she had seen her monarch, and it was fair to say those years had not been kind to him. In fact, they had been downright nasty. Gretel recalled the fine, upright figure of a man who had smiled at her so benevolently when she had stood before him as a girl. She remembered broad shoulders, strong, lithe limbs, and a proud bearing. Now, in the unforgiving light that bounced off the profusion of cold stone and color that surrounded them, she could just make out a frail, crumpled old man almost swamped by the cushions on which he had been placed. Gretel tried not to stare, but the change in her king was so dramatic and so unexpected she momentarily forgot her own precarious situation.

  No wonder, she thought, the king had long ago given up public appearances. He could hardly go out among his subjects looking like that.

  There was a word for his appearance. One unavoidable word. Wizened. Not a good look for a king, especially when trying to live up to the nomenclature “Mighty.”

  Behind him stood a small group of men. All were finely dressed and clearly important, but one struck Gretel as a cut above the others, even at first glance. He was tallish, darkish, and more than a little handsome. She shook away the possibility that Agnes might have been on to something. This was not the moment to be sizing up romantic possibilities. If the king lived up to his reputation it would be a very long time indeed before she was at liberty to be troubled by thoughts of men in such a context.

  “In the name of King Julian,” the sergeant’s voice ricocheted off the surfeit of marble, “kneel!”

  Gretel and Bruder did as they were told. The important men stepped forward for a better view of the wretches before them. Gretel felt humiliation warming her cheeks at the thought of the tufts of cotton sticking out of her shoes, the unmissable aroma of ammonia rising from her clothes, the unkempt condition of her hair, and her general state of dishevelment. She also felt her knees beginning to complain about their continued contact with the unyielding floor.

  The king stirred minutely on his bolsters.

  “Who are these . . . people?” His voice had become as enfeebled as the rest of him. The sergeant bowed low as he addressed his monarch.

  “My Liege!” he yelled. “Princess Charlotte has been found! She was abducted by these two peasants—”

  Gretel squirmed, attempting to straighten up. “I take issue with ‘peasants.’”

  A heavily booted foot between her shoulder blades forced her back down. “Silence in the presence of King Julian!” yelled one of the guards.

  “—these two peasants,” continued the sergeant at high volume, “who carried her away in their wagon in the direction of the town of Gesternstadt, with the nefarious intent to there secrete her in an unknown place, for the purposes of extorting a ransom.”

  “Where’s he getting all this from?” Gretel wanted to know.

  “Silence!” hollered the guard.

  She winced as another boot struck home. The king flapped a flimsy hand.

  “What’s he saying?” he asked his attendants. “What’s this all about?”

  One of the important-looking men leaned close to the king’s ear. “Princess Charlotte!” he shouted, so loudly that Farmer Bruder yelped.

  “Charlotte?” The king was clearly having trouble recalling who that might be. “You mean Lottie? Dear little Lottie?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” bellowed the attendant. “She has been found.”

  “And these fellows found her?” The king’s wrinkles rearranged themselves into what might once have been a smile. “Then we shall reward them handsomely.”

  The sergeant was scandalized. “My Liege!”

  The attendant tried again. “No, sire, these peasants are the ones who took her.”

  “What’s that you say?”’

  A de
sperate note entered the aide’s voice, giving it a shrillness that caused everyone in the room to flinch. “Abducted! Kidnapped! Stolen away!” he screamed.

  “No, no,” said the king, still smiling, “Lottie’s been found. It’s all right, Klaus,” he said, pointing at Gretel and Bruder, “these good people found my little girl and brought her home to me. Isn’t that right, Sergeant?”

  The sergeant looked very much as if he might cry.

  At that moment the great doors opened once again and a flurry of females entered the hall. Princess Charlotte was at the vanguard of the little group. Gretel noticed the vixen had found time to change into something elegant and simple. She was aware of a burgeoning hatred for the girl, which was quickly blossoming into a full-grown loathing.

  “Papa!” Charlotte hurried to kiss her father. Her two sisters, her mother, and a collection of ladies-in-waiting swept along behind her, skirts rustling and swooshing as they came. “Oh, Papa! I was so frightened. Afraid for my very life!”

  “There, there, my child.” King Julian patted her hand with all the weight of a butterfly flapping in her palm. “You’re safe now. Home with your papa.”

  The princess looked at Gretel and Bruder as if she had only just noticed them and shrieked, “Oh! Those heinous villains.”

  Gretel risked opening her mouth. “There she goes again with this ‘heinous’ business. I really must protest.”

  The sergeant leapt at the opportunity to vent his frustration. Or rather, he leapt at Gretel.

  “In the name of King Julian, be silent!” he insisted, flattening her against the floor once more, her nose squished painfully sideways upon a cerise square. Gretel was unsure whether it was the color or the pressure that was making her eyes water.

  “I never abducted anyone in my life!”

  The king was beginning to catch up at last.

  “These people, Lottie? These are the ones who kidnapped you?”