Devil in the Countryside

by Cory Barclay

  Dieter didn’t have the words to speak. He opened his mouth a few times, but stayed silent each time. His mind whirled. If what Hanns is saying is true . . . then the conspiracy in Bedburg goes far deeper than I ever thought possible. Could it reach all the way to the archbishop of Cologne—or above that . . . to Pope Sixtus himself?

  It was overwhelming, but, as disturbing as it was, Dieter wasn’t too surprised. He shook his head and looked the pastor in the eyes. There was a sense of tiredness and sadness in Pastor Richter’s brown eyes.

  They said their farewells, embraced, and Hanns turned and headed east, further into the woods.

  Dieter felt a weight on his conscience, but he couldn’t tell what it stemmed from. It was a nagging suspicion . . . that as he watched the pastor disappear into the woods, he couldn’t help but feel as though that was the last time he’d ever see Hanns Richter.

  When he thought back on the pastor’s words and warnings, he shook his head. No, he decided. Hanns Richter is telling the truth. And that means two things: I have to get Sybil, and we need to get the hell out of Bedburg.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  SYBIL

  After Sybil had recalled what happened with Johannes von Bergheim, and told her father, Peter had left their home in a drowsy stupor. Sybil didn’t ask where he was going. Instead, she spent the time resting, until Hugo shyly crept into her room about an hour later. He still clutched the horse-doll she’d made him.

  “Are you all right, Beele?” Hugo asked.

  Sybil gave her little brother a hug.

  Hugo said, “I love you,” and it was almost enough to make Sybil cry, but she held the tears back. She had done enough weeping, she decided, and wouldn’t allow herself to feel abused any longer.

  I will be like a stone wall, strong and impenetrable.

  “I know,” she whispered in Hugo’s ear, “I love you too.”

  “What’s going to happen to us?”

  Sybil stared into the boy’s big, round eyes. He was small for his age, but seemed to be growing recently at a rate Sybil hadn’t seen before. She smiled. “What do you mean? We’re going to be fine.” She stood up from her bed and ran her hand through Hugo’s shaggy hair.

  “Do you promise?”

  “I do.”

  “But what about Johannes? He’s going to take you away from us. I’ll never see you again,” Hugo said. His big eyes seemed to shrink.

  “That’s not true,” Sybil said. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “But what can you do? You’re just a girl.”

  The words stung Sybil. As innocent as they sounded, they caused her to stutter and pause. She steeled herself and clenched her jaw. “I am just as strong as any man, Hue. Don’t forget that.”

  Hugo nodded and fiddled with his doll. “I know . . . but other people might not. Will I see you again after you leave?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Hugo looked up at her. “You promise?”

  “I promise,” Sybil said, smiling. That’s two promises in two minutes, she thought. I hope I can make good on them.

  The boy jumped in Sybil’s arms and they embraced again.

  “I have to run an errand, Hue, but I’ll be back soon.” Hugo opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Sybil said, “I promise.”

  Hugo smiled and ran out of the room.

  Sybil watched her brother leave, and then exhaled heavily and smoothed her dress.

  Night fell on Bedburg, and the town bustled with activity. Last minute preparations to fortify the southern and western walls of the town were being finished, and soldiers paraded the streets, fully dressed and battle-ready. It was a much different atmosphere than most of the townsfolk were used to.

  Sybil made her way through the curving roads, heading south and west. Her eyes darted around in all directions. She felt paranoid about being followed. The whole city was on edge.

  At the Achterberg estate, Sybil grabbed the Ninety-Five Theses from behind the wall of the hearth. After Dieter had kept it in his chambers at the church for one night, he decided to hide the book at the Achterberg’s, away from prying eyes.

  Sybil sat at the small table and lit the candle. The flame brought immediate warmth and light to the dark room. Sybil opened the manuscript. As she read, time flew by. The purple horizon turned a darker shade as time passed, until the sky was black and littered with stars.

  Every so often, she poked her head up from the book and peered out of the single window of the house, wondering where Dieter was. They’d made no plans of meeting that night, but Sybil had hoped Dieter would show up anyway.

  The fleeting minutes turned into long hours, and there was still no sign of Dieter. Sybil’s paranoia grew worse. She feared that her father might have left the house and, in his haze, done something awful. She feared that God had taken Dieter from her. She feared that someone might have found out about their torrid relationship. She feared anything and everything—that whatever could go wrong, would. She sighed deeply and shook her head. He is stubborn, but my father is not a bad man; God would never take Dieter from me; no one knows of our relationship. She had an answer for every silly thought in her head, and she smiled.

  Sybil hoped that someday her father would give her his blessing. Peter must have seen the way she looked at Dieter, and he could not deny their relationship forever. Sybil knew Peter must have felt an insurmountable shame after forcing her through the horrible tirade with Johannes.

  A creaking sound stole her from her thoughts. She shifted in her seat and stared at the front door. She smiled as the door slowly opened, and then she stood and said, “It’s about time. You took long enough.” Her smile faded as she stared at the two shadowy figures standing in the doorway.

  After hearing Peter’s confession regarding Sybil and Johannes, and after meeting with Pastor Richter, Dieter still felt uneasy. On one hand, his spirit was rejuvenated from meeting with the pastor. But on the other hand, Hanns’ words unnerved him.

  He left the woods and headed back toward Bedburg in a hurry. He wanted to check on Sybil, to make sure she was safe. When he realized that the town’s northern gate was well guarded, he headed toward the western entrance instead. The western gate had a weaker military presence, but to be safe he stayed outside of the town’s walls.

  The detour around the walls of Bedburg cost him over an hour of time. At one point he had to hide behind a copse of trees as a scouting party from Bedburg made their rounds near him. He eventually reached the fields to the south of town, and stood between Peter Griswold’s estate to the east, and Karl Achterberg’s to the west.

  Where will she be?

  He looked in both directions, over and over. The sky was pitch black, and he couldn’t afford to waste more time by choosing the wrong house to go to.

  He decided to head to the Achterberg estate. He figured Sybil might have gone there to calm her nerves and separate herself from her father.

  Dieter made it to the hill that led to the Achterberg house, and then broke into a sprint, unable to contain his excitement. He had so much to tell Sybil.

  He reached the front door of the house and almost tripped on his robe.

  He burst through the door without knocking, and as the door swung open he said, “Beele, are you here? We must gather our things and leave this place immediately! I’ve learned a terrible—”

  He stepped through the doorway and saw Sybil sitting at the table at the other end of the room, her hands tightly clasped on her lap.

  “Dieter!” she yelled.

  He heard a sharp crack and his eyes lost focus. His entire body went numb, and the floor rushed to meet his face. He put his hands out instinctively and caught his fall. On his knees and hands, he blinked a few times and saw blood dripping onto the floor. He groaned and crumpled to his stomach.

  As Dieter rolled onto his back, the last thing he saw before losing consciousness was a golden cross dangling over his head.

  When Dieter awok
e, his hands were bound. He sat next to Sybil, at the table, and the Ninety-Five Theses was open in front of him. His vision started off blurry, until he blinked away tears.

  Two figures stood at the other end of the room.

  It took him a long moment to regain focus.

  Bishop Solomon and Vicar Balthasar stared at him from the doorway. The vicar was leaning on his walking staff. The top end of the staff was crusted with blood.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sybil said to Dieter. Her hands were also bound.

  “Quiet, you wretch,” Bishop Solomon ordered. He was hunched over, and his hands were clasped behind his back. He started pacing the room and clicking his tongue.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Father Nicolaus,” Vicar Balthasar said. “I truly believed you to be an honest man of the cloth, and not a traitor to your own people.”

  Dieter frowned and tried to stand. His knees knocked together, and Vicar Balthasar ran the length of the room in an instant and held his staff out toward Dieter’s throat. All signs of his limp were gone.

  Dieter stared at the round-faced priest, sat back down, and said, “I’ve betrayed no one.”

  Bishop Solomon was shaking his head. “You’ve betrayed God. I have the evidence to prove it.”

  “You won’t get away with this, Solomon,” Dieter growled.

  The bishop shrugged. “Of course I will. When I said you were finished, did you think I was bluffing? Tsk, tsk, Dieter.” The bishop’s sagging face tightened, and his eyes narrowed. “Stand up. Both of you.”

  Dieter wobbled as he stood, and his head brimmed with a sharp pain. Sybil leaned toward him to help him to his feet.

  Vicar Balthasar walked around the captives and prodded them in the back with his staff. “I never took you for such an exquisite student of subterfuge and manipulation,” he said, and then sighed. “What’s done is done, I suppose.” The vicar cleared his throat and raised his voice. “With the power vested in me under Archbishop Ernst of Cologne, Pope Sixtus above him, and God above him, I hereby place you under arrest, Dieter Nicolaus, for various crimes.”

  Dieter noticed that Lord Werner’s name was not mentioned in the vicar’s formal decree. He craned his neck to try and watch Balthasar read off the charges.

  “Firstly, for reading a heretical text.” The vicar nudged his chin toward the Ninety-Five Theses. “Secondly, for staying in this house, a property of the Catholic church, without proper title or taxation. Thirdly, for treason, by abetting the Protestant rebels and supplying them with pertinent information about Bedburg’s defenses.” The vicar yawned and sounded bored. “Fourthly, for corrupting this young woman into your blasphemous faith, against your vows of perpetual chastity. And finally—and worst of all—for disavowing God from your heart.”

  Vicar Balthasar prodded Dieter one more time with his staff, and then turned away. “You lied to us about Pastor Hanns Richter, Herr Nicolaus. Your clever manipulation surely knows no bounds.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dieter asked.

  “You talked us into releasing the man, in the name of mercy, so that he might go away forever. Well, scouts have told me they’ve seen him fraternizing with the Calvinist army, possibly leading their religious sect on the front lines. That isn’t quite ‘fading into obscurity,’ is it?”

  Dieter spat on the floor. “You know those charges against me are untrue. Would you, vicar—a minister of the faith—truly bring me up on such falsities?”

  Balthasar shrugged. “I see no untruth in those claims. You brought all of this upon yourself.” He turned to Sybil and poked her in the back with his staff, and she let out a startled yelp. “And as for you, Sybil Griswold, I place you under arrest for aiding in treason against your people, for reading a heretical text, and for witchcraft and sorcery, where you stole a once-good priest away from the salvation of God.”

  Sybil’s eyes sparkled, but she kept the tears away.

  Dieter grew angry—angrier than Sybil had ever seen—and she watched him snap and growl at the vicar and bishop.

  Balthasar forced Dieter and Sybil to walk forward, while Solomon went outside and brought a carriage around. It had been hidden up the hill, away from the house.

  Before they boarded the carriage, Bishop Solomon leaned close to them and said, “May your souls be damned to Hell for eternity.”

  As the carriage bumped and rattled over the road, Sybil whispered to Dieter, “What will they do to us?”

  They were inside the coach. Sybil felt scared, and her hands trembled. Solomon sat next to the driver of the carriage, outside, while Vicar Balthasar sat opposite Sybil and Dieter, in the coach.

  Balthasar studied Sybil and Dieter’s faces. He frequently tapped the bottom of his staff on the ground, but he never took his eyes away from the former priest and his lover.

  Dieter met eyes with the vicar and said, “They mean to kill us, Beele.” There was a hint of venom in his voice. He continued matching stares with Balthasar.

  Sybil faced Dieter, and then turned to the vicar and raised her eyebrows.

  Vicar Balthasar nodded. “Given the severity of your multiple crimes, that does sound like an apt outcome. Treason alone carries that sentence.”

  “You must try us first, under the rules of law,” Sybil said. She tried to loosen her wrist-bindings by squirming in her seat, but failed.

  Before Balthasar could confirm or deny his intent, Dieter said, “We were found guilty the minute these two stepped onto the Achterberg’s estate, Beele. We won’t see a fair trial.”

  Vicar Balthasar raised his hands up, as if surrendering. “I am just doing as the law requires. I arrested you in the archbishop’s name, but he is not here. Bishop Solomon controls your fate . . . and after your fiasco in front of Lord Werner, I doubt that the bishop feels very forgiving.”

  Dieter looked away from the vicar and turned to the curtained window to his right.

  “Who do you think could have done this to us?” Sybil asked Dieter. She didn’t bother to conceal her words from Balthasar.

  “Georg Sieghart,” Dieter said without hesitation. He sighed and stared at the rolling countryside outside the window. “He knew of us, and I should have known that the drunk blabbermouth would never keep his word. I’m sorry for not listening to you, Beele. Your father came to me this morning. He was a wreck and gave me a tearful confession.”

  When Dieter turned to face Sybil, his head was shaking. His lips trembled as he struggled to speak. Finally, he said, “He told me what Johannes von Bergheim did to you. I’m so sorry I couldn’t do anything—I’ve failed you.”

  Sybil gritted her teeth. “You were never charged with my safety or well-being, Dieter. I’m not a child.”

  The carriage rolled into Bedburg under the cover of darkness, right through the middle of town. They made it to the jailhouse. Sybil and Dieter were both hooded as they stepped out of the carriage. They were led down the stairs of a place that smelled like a moldy cellar.

  At the bottom of the steps, their hoods were removed.

  Heinrich Franz sat in a chair at the end of the hall, reading over a piece of paper. As Sybil and Dieter were escorted around the investigator, Heinrich gazed up and had a perplexed look on his face, one that showed he didn’t understand why the priest and the farmer’s daughter were there.

  They walked into the second room, where Ulrich the punisher stood with a key in his hand. He grinned, causing the scar on his face to become disfigured, and then he opened a gate.

  Sybil and Dieter were thrown into the cold cell together. Across from them, in another cell, a prisoner sat huddled in a shadowy corner, whimpering, with his knees drawn up to his chest.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  HEINRICH

  Heinrich was livid. “You should have consulted me before arresting those two, dammit.” He spoke to the vicar and bishop. “It’s my job to find and arrest the criminals in Bedburg, not yours!” He pounded his gloved hand against his palm as he walked back and forth in the jailhouse ha
ll.

  “I guess we did your job for you,” Vicar Balthasar said. “You should be thanking us.”

  Bishop Solomon grinned slightly. “Please, investigator, does your vanity and pride always have to get the better of you? Must you always be the hero who saves the damsel and arrests the unlawful?” Bishop Solomon’s grin turned into a frown, and his voice turned steely. “In case you haven’t noticed, that strategy hasn’t been working.”

  What is going on here? Heinrich thought, looking back and forth from Bishop Solomon’s gray face, to Vicar Balthasar’s round, cherubic one. Just the other day these two seemed ready to rip each other apart, and now they seem like they’re . . . friends.

  Heinrich took a deep breath and thrust a finger in Solomon’s direction. “I have an ongoing investigation, Your Grace. These arrests make everything messy. Your prerogative should be aimed at your parishioners, while mine is aimed at the criminals. If we stay out of each other’s way, things go smoothly—but not like this.”

  The bishop chuckled and eyed Balthasar, who stayed quiet in the corner of the hall, leaning against his walking staff. “We gathered intelligence, Herr Franz,” Solomon began, “and had to act quickly. In your line of work, I’m sure you understand the value of acting expeditiously.”

  Heinrich studied the old bishop’s wrinkled face and wry smile. So smug, he thought, shaking his head. He thinks he can do anything he likes. He thinks he owns this town . . .

  Heinrich’s heart quickened, and he stopped pacing in order to calm himself. “Under what charges did you arrest them?”

  Vicar Balthasar reached into his robe, pulled out a roll of parchment, and handed it to the investigator. “Take your pick.”