Once Upon a Crime

by P. J. Brackston

  “Oh, Papa! It terrifies me merely to look upon them!”

  Gretel found it hard to imagine how a piss-drenched old farmer and a woman with a soldier’s foot on the back of her neck could inspire terror in anyone, let alone this determined, untruthful princess who clearly hadn’t a scruple to her name.

  The king hauled himself to his feet, causing several of his attendants to rush to his sides to shore him up. From her unique perspective Gretel could see that his feet were not actually touching the ground.

  “Off with their heads!” he commanded. “Clap them in irons! Throw them to the lions! Have them hung, drawn, and quartered! Gouge out their eyes with dragons’ teeth! Burn them alive!”

  The sergeant brightened visibly. “Forgive me, my King,” he boomed, “but which would you like us to do first?”

  King Julian was in his stride now.

  “Boil them in oil! Stretch them on the rack! Drag out their entrails with buzzards’ claws! Pull off their ears with salad tongs!”

  The queen stepped in, placing a hand on her husband’s arm.

  “Dearest, a little lie-down, I think. And perhaps your medication?” She nodded to the aides, who gently bore away their ranting royal master.

  One of the attendants, the one who was more good looking than a person had a right to be, in Gretel’s opinion, paused to speak to the sergeant.

  “Take them to the Schloss dungeons,” he said, “and await further instructions.”

  The situation may have been addling Gretel’s senses, but she was fairly certain the man cast her a look of Special Significance before he turned and followed the raving monarch out of the great hall.

  THREE

  Gretel had never been in a dungeon before and hoped never to be in one again. She was now entirely focused on getting out of the one into which, not an hour earlier, she had been so uncaringly thrown. There was very little natural light, with only a single high window for the sun to find its way through. The torches on the walls of the passageway outside the cell lent some flickering illumination, but most was blocked out by the hefty bars that formed the door that sealed Gretel and Bruder into their chill chamber. There was nothing in the way of furnishings, unless you were prepared to count the pile of dank straw in one corner. Gretel was not. Nor was she prepared to entertain the idea of prolonged incarceration in such a place, with or without the lachrymose and whimpering farmer. It was with a sinking heart that she realized such a fate was probably the best she could hope for. Presumably the king was being soothed somewhere, by the queen and by, she hoped, copious quantities of medicaments. This could only be, she deduced, a temporary respite. Quite literally a stay of execution. Once he recovered what wits he possessed, he would no doubt take up the cause of justice for his daughter once more, and some gruesome death would duly be arranged. Gretel had had enough time to ponder the merits and demerits of the long list of sticky ends the king had already provided. None of them appealed to her, or seemed in the tiniest bit fair. She had to get away, and there was no time to be lost. She stepped over to the bars and called out in what she hoped was an appealing yet confident tone.

  “Hello? Hello, guard. Are you there?”

  She could make out a rattling of keys and some off-tune humming in the distance.

  “Hello! Guard,” she tried again. Then, remembering the level of noise that seemed to pass for normal in the Schloss, she bellowed, “Guard!!” one more time.

  The humming ceased. A skinny fellow with poor personal hygiene emerged from the gloom.

  “What’s all your noise about?” he asked, raising his lantern.

  Gretel beckoned him.

  “Come closer, so that we might not be overheard.”

  “And what might I want to talk to you about that should not be overheard?”

  “Should you come close enough so that we might not be overheard I might tell you.”

  “And what might you tell me that should not be overheard that I might want to talk to you about should I come close enough that you might tell me?”

  “Should you come close enough that I might talk to you and we might not be overheard it might be that you might hear what I might tell you that you should not want to be overheard.”

  There was a pause.

  “Nah, sorry,” said the guard, “you’ve lost me. Can we go back to the bit where you might tell me that what should not be overheard?”

  Gretel felt a scream building in her throat. She swallowed it down and replaced it with her brightest smile.

  “How much to spring me out of this dump?”

  “How much have you got?”

  She fumbled inside her corset and brought out her entire stash of notes. She held them up so the guard could see them, but not close enough for him to be able to reach them.

  He squinted at the wad of money.

  “I prefer gold. Know where you are with gold.”

  “This is all I brought with me.”

  “How do I know that? How do I know you haven’t got loads more stuffed . . . somewhere?”

  “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  “Hah! Take the word of a heinous peasant kidnapper who wanted to do away with the lovely Princess Charlotte? What sort of a fool would that make me?”

  Gretel really did not know where to start with sorting out such a bundle of slander and inaccuracies.

  “Look,” she told him, as levelly as her nerves would allow, “this is all the money I’ve got. If you get me out, we can meet somewhere and I’ll give you as much again.”

  The guard jerked his head in the direction of Bruder. “What about him?”

  “What? Oh, yes, all right. You can have him, too.”

  “I meant, do you want me to get him out as well? I’m not doing it for nothing. More people, more risk, more money.”

  Bruder’s ears had gone up sufficiently at some point in the exchange for him to hear the important bits concerning himself.

  “Don’t leave me here! I beg of you, save a poor humble farmer. Remember how I took pity on you, all alone on the road. How I rescued you from a long, lonely walk.”

  “I remember how you charged me for it.”

  “You can have that money back—here! Give it to the guard, do whatever you want with it, but take me with you. Please!”

  Gretel regarded the little man with distaste. Even in the inadequate light of the dungeon, his red cheeks were unappealingly ruddy, his face a picture of despair, and his breeches were beginning to smell of more than mere urine.

  “Give me one good reason why I should help you.”

  “I play cards with your brother on Fridays.”

  “Not enough.”

  “I’ve got a barn full of potatoes. They can be yours.”

  “Tempting, but no. Sorry.” Gretel faced the guard again. “Just the one ticket, if you please.”

  “No, wait!” The farmer leapt after her with surprising agility, clutching at her arm. As he did so, Gretel noticed a small band around his left wrist. Closer inspection revealed it to be not a band but a red velvet collar of exactly the type worn by Frau Hapsburg’s cats.

  “Where did you get that?” she demanded.

  “What?”

  “That . . . thing around your wrist. Tell me where you got it.”

  Some deep-seated instinct for self-preservation inside Bruder pinged into life. He pulled his arm away, tugging his sleeve down to hide the collar.

  “Take me with you and I’ll tell you,” he said.

  “You are a horrible, sly little man,” Gretel told him, a comment that resulted in his insisting they sort out the when and the where of his final payment before they went a step further.

  At last, the guard led them down a twisting passageway that descended deeper and deeper beneath the Schloss. The temperature grew colder with every step, and the air wetter and more foul.

  “Are you sure this is the way out?” Gretel asked.

  “’Course I am. I’ve worked in these dungeons as man and
boy. I know every hidden tunnel and secret doorway there is. I’m risking a lot by helping you get away. It’s only ’cos I know how things work around here I can do it without finding myself in one of His Majesty’s cells. You are paying for my expertise,” said the guard.

  “Don’t remind me,” said Gretel.

  “Wait for me!” wailed Bruder.

  “Keep up,” Gretel told him, trying hard to ignore the agony of her blisters.

  “Here we are,” said the guard in an I-told-you-so sort of voice.

  They had reached a heavily studded door at the bottom of a short flight of steps. The guard hurried down and struggled with the great iron bolt that secured it.

  Gretel quickly lost patience.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, let me do it,” she said. She pushed the scrawny man aside, grasped the bolt with both hands, leaned all her weight back, and heaved. Even then she only just managed to shift the thing. There was a nerve-jangling screech as metal ground against metal, and finally a welcome clunk as the door sprang open.

  “This is as far as I go,” said the guard. “You’re on your own from here.”

  “At least give us the lantern,” said Gretel.

  “Don’t be daft; you’d be spotted in a minute. There’s a good moon. Just keep to the Schloss wall, follow it round until you come to the entrance on the west wing. The guard there will be properly asleep by now. Useless, he is, I’ve told them time and again, he wants sacking he does, if you ask me, but no one does—”

  “Yes, yes, all very fascinating, but what do we do then?”

  “Well, you’ll have to head for the woods. Climb the fence, skirt round the edge of the forest for half a mile or so, and you’ll pick up the Gesternstadt road again.” He pushed Gretel and Bruder out into the darkness of the night.

  “Don’t hang about, and keep quiet. Not a sound. They’ve got very good ears. Once you’ve climbed the wooden fence into the woods, you’ll be all right.”

  Something struck Gretel as odd.

  “What do you mean, ‘They’ve got very good ears’? Most people in this place only respond to bellowing and yelling.”

  The guard mumbled into his collar, retreating into the passageway. Gretel grabbed his arm.

  “If you want the second half of your payment next week, you’ll tell me now: Who has very good ears?”

  “The lions.”

  Bruder started to sob. Gretel tried to remain calm.

  “What in the name of all that’s sensible are lions doing prowling around out here?”

  “They use them to guard the Schloss at night. Much better than dogs. They don’t leave any waste when they, you know, catch intruders.”

  Bruder clutched at the flimsiest of straws.

  “But we are not intruders!” he insisted. “We are breaking out!”

  “I fear the finer details of our predicament may be lost on a pack of hungry lions,” said Gretel.

  “Pride,” said the guard. “It’s a pride of lions, not a pack.”

  Gretel decided that, should she succeed in escaping from the dungeons, avoiding the king’s troops, evading the lions, climbing the fence, and navigating her way safely out of the wretched forest, she would enjoy spending time thinking up a suitably horrible thing to do to the guard when next they met. Now, however, was not the time to lose her temper.

  “Come on, Bruder,” she said, heading off in a westerly direction. “Keep up, keep quiet, and, for pity’s sake, try to keep bodily emissions to a minimum. Lions can presumably smell every bit as well as they can hear.”

  The full moon gave sufficient light for the pair to pick their way along the lea of the outer wall of the Schloss. Gretel forged ahead, ignoring her screaming feet, trying hard not to imagine sharp teeth looming out of the darkness. Bruder was hopeless at maintaining the pace, so that he frequently dropped out of sight. Gretel dared not nag him to get a move on for fear of attracting very unwanted attention. After what seemed like an age of scrambling over the damp ground, they drew level with the sentry post at the west gate. A rhythmic rumbling from within confirmed that the guard had been right about his colleague’s dedication to his task. Signaling impatiently to the farmer, Gretel made a dash for the perimeter fence. The distance could only have been a few hundred strides, but it seemed vast and open and she felt horribly exposed. She had gone a little more than halfway when she heard a gentle rasping noise coming from the blackness just out of view. She squinted into the gloom.

  Bruder finally caught up and cannoned into her. “Why have we stopped?” he whispered.

  “I heard something,” Gretel hissed at him. “There’s something over there.”

  The two fugitives lost the ability to move. They stood as if roots had sprouted from their feet and burrowed deep into the rich Bavarian soil. Gretel was aware of sweat, born not of exertion or heat but of fear, lubricating her armpits. The gentle rasping grew louder. She was having difficulty forming coherent thoughts, but it sounded very much to her like the noise a large, toothsome animal might make as the breath puffed in and out of its fearsome jaws. A sudden flashback of a school visit to Verstadt Zoo was all the confirmation she needed that she was indeed within spitting distance of a lion. Letting out a scream worthy of the very wildest of banshees, she tore off in the direction of the fence, Bruder, terror lending wings to his heels, for once close behind. But even this impressive turn of speed was no match for the powerful stride of the colossal male lion that gave chase. Within seconds he was upon them, and with one casual swipe of a paw had Bruder held to the ground. Gretel glanced back to see the old man squirming like a pinned fly, legs wriggling, mouth open in silent horror, gathering breath for what would surely be his final utterance in this world. She was close to the fence now. Another burst of effort and she would be there. With the lion happily occupied, she could climb over the boundary and be safe in a matter of moments.

  And then Bruder screamed. It was not, as she had half expected, a shrill wail of agony. Instead he managed to somehow form the one word that could have had any effect on Gretel.

  “Mummy!” he cried into the still night air.

  Now, Gretel knew herself pretty well, and if asked she would confidently have been able to state that had circumstances demanded it she could have sacrificed any and all to save her own bejowled neck. She had not, however, factored in the deep-seated and clearly unresolved issues she harbored regarding the idea of a mother. Any mother, for her, was problematic. Her own, because she had died giving birth to her. Her stepmother, for obvious and well-documented reasons. Herself, for not being one. There were probably further variations, but these three were enough to make Gretel pause in her stride. It mattered not that the pungent farmer was old enough to be her own grandfather, or that she rarely if ever suffered the slightest twinge of a maternal instinct. A human being (give or take) was in extremis and was calling for his mummy. Something inside Gretel compelled her to act.

  Summoning another shocking scream, she charged the monstrous lion. For a second she had the advantage of surprise. Evidently the animal was unused to having large, bedraggled women come at him with murder in their eyes. Gretel continued her charge, her battle cry fading as she realized she had no weapon and no idea what she was going to do. The gap between her and the beast was shrinking fast. She whipped off a shoe, holding it high in the most threatening manner she could manage.

  The lion, provoked by such a sight, left off mauling Bruder and lunged toward Gretel. The old man saw his chance, scrambled to his feet, and started running. Gretel and the lion met. There was a tangle of fur and fine woolen tailoring as the two tumbled in an inappropriately cozy embrace. When they came to a stop, Gretel was beneath the creature. She rammed her shoe between its jaws, jamming them open, so that the lion could neither bite her nor close its mouth. It gave a roar of fury and swiped at Gretel. For a moment she thought it would pull her head from her shoulders, but as luck would have it, the big cat’s claws had snagged her top hat, which it wrenched from her head. Gretel
rolled over, sprang to her feet, casting off the remaining shoe, and fled. Behind her the lion leapt and raged as it attempted to shake the hat from its paw and spit out the shoe. Its noise had alerted the rest of the pride.

  As Gretel ran she could sense rather than see lions closing in on all sides. Ahead of her, the farmer had just reached the base of the fence.

  “Bruder!” Gretel shouted. “Help me, Bruder!” Bruder ignored her cries and started to climb.

  Gretel had never been much of a runner. Walking was challenge enough, over any distance, and she disliked the sweaty, red-faced appearance exertion demanded of her. Through life she had found that there were ways of avoiding such undignified activities, and had never felt the need to demonstrate any sort of athletic aptitude.

  Until now. Now, she knew, if she was to see the sun rise ever again, she must find reserves of physical strength and ability hitherto undiscovered. But the distance between herself and the fence seemed, as if in a dream, to get no smaller, however hard she ran, while the distance between herself and the nearest lion was diminishing with every bound the great animal made. Gretel did not want to die cursing a smelly peasant, so she marshaled her thoughts, struggling to elevate them into a suitable state for entering the hereafter. Just as she had convinced herself it was all up for Gretel (yes, that Gretel) from Gesternstadt, there came a swift whooshing noise as an arrow whistled past her nose and struck the nearest lion’s chest. The creature fell silently, dead before it hit the ground. Gretel did not let the shock of what had just happened slow her pace, but flung herself at the fence. Where the arrow had come from or who had fired it, she neither knew nor cared. Above her, Bruder was still attempting to haul himself to the top when another lion sprang from the shadows and snatched him down. Gretel yanked herself onto the uppermost wooden rail. She could not see Bruder, but she could hear his shrieks. They didn’t last long, but were quickly replaced with the stomach-turning sounds of powerful jaws crunching on bones. Gretel used her vantage point to scan the Schloss grounds, searching for the mystery archer, but there was no sign of anyone. She pivoted over the fence and let herself down, landing heavily on the forest floor. She staggered to her feet and dusted herself off, and then, with the unforgettable sounds of the lions feasting on the farmer echoing through the trees, she trudged toward home.