Twelfth Krampus Night

by Matt Manochio

  “That is kind of her.”

  They ambled down the path a few minutes without speaking, listening to the whistling wind, occasionally shielding their eyes from it, before Beate spoke.

  “No reservations? About our wedding?”

  “I think we were destined to marry when we learned we were both born on the same day,” Heinrich said. “I’m surprised we didn’t marry sooner. My parents did when they were seventeen.”

  “We’ll be eighteen in a week. There won’t be much of a difference. And I think it’s appropriate that we marry on our birthday. I’m glad you suggested it, love.” Beate thought for a moment. “Love—that’s one advantage peasants have over the nobles, for the most part. We marry for love, they marry for land. A marriage isn’t healthy if you have plenty of space but don’t truly appreciate the person you’re sharing it with.”

  “It’s a good thing our parents arranged our marriage and that we just so happen to love each other—some aren’t as fortunate,” Heinrich said.

  “Well, hello, young lovebirds!”

  Heinrich yanked Uli to stop him from hitting an old woman standing in the road.

  “Watch where you’re going!” Heinrich said.

  “Why don’t you watch where you’re going? I was standing here all the while you were chatting with your beloved betrothed.” The old woman expressed no animosity.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you,” he said.

  Beate, still clutching Heinrich, poked out her head to see who stood in their way.

  “You could hear us?” she said.

  “Not so much you,” the old woman said. “The young man’s voice carries, and I’m glad it does. Hearing about young love makes me tingly. And truly good women like you deserve nothing but a man who’ll cherish and respect them. Here.”

  The old woman walked to Uli’s side, both riders eyeing her suspiciously. “Open your hand, dear, I mean you no harm.”

  Beate cautiously extended her open left hand, ready to yank it back, but there was no need. The old woman clutched Beate’s hand with both of hers, and when she released it, Beate held a silver coin the size of her palm.

  “Better in the hand than in the shoe, right?” the old woman said, smiling.

  “What?” It was Heinrich.

  Beate was too distracted to reply. She’d seen silver coins from a distance when the wealthy bought the most expensive clothes during her visits to the castle. But now to hold one?

  “Thank you,” she squeaked.

  “No thanks necessary, my dear.” The old woman walked toward the castle. She called over her shoulder, “It’s a solidus, my dear—all for you. Try not to cry on your wedding day.”

  Heinrich looked at Beate and then to the coin, whose face depicted a bust of Jesus Christ—His hand raised in benediction, a cross behind Him—and lettering they did not recognize. The obverse portrayed a man—they knew not who—standing on steps, holding a cross potent.

  The couple looked behind them and saw no trace of the old woman.

  “Beate, hide it. Put it away. Who knows who’s watching?” Heinrich said through gritted teeth.

  As casually as she could, Beate slipped the coin into a small pocket she had sewn on the inside of her cloak. “Go, love,” she whispered, and kissed his cheek.

  They rode Uli in silence while keeping vigilant of their surroundings. Heinrich hesitated farther up the path, and then slowed Uli when he spotted a woman sitting against a tall evergreen, her legs sticking into the road.

  “Someone’s napping, B.” Heinrich pointed fifty feet ahead to his right. “At least I hope someone’s napping.”

  “Bandits? It could be a trap.” Beate had heard the stories of criminals springing from the woods, slitting innocent throats and absconding with whatever they could fleece from the bodies.

  Heinrich patted the baselard sheathed on his belt and surveyed the landscape, seeing nothing unusual. “I’ll just keep going.”

  He prodded Uli almost to run but reined him in upon hearing Beate. “Gisela, no!”

  Beate didn’t wait for Uli to stop moving but slid off the horse, rushing to her friend.

  Heinrich couldn’t see the woman’s face, as her head drooped toward her belly. “How do you know it’s her?”

  “I’d recognize the fox fur anywhere.” Beate was shocked the cloak hadn’t been pilfered. She kneeled before her friend, unable to comprehend the bloody mass that was her bloodstained belly, oozing crimson into her shredded white dress.

  She placed the back of her hand to Gisela’s cheek and shivered at its iciness. Beate used both hands to gently lift Gisela’s head and cried while looking at lifeless blue eyes.

  Heinrich hopped off Uli, holding the horse’s reins in one hand and unsheathing his dagger with the other. “We can’t do anything for her here. We have to warn the rest of the village.”

  “Oh no, that means her bab—” Beate stopped herself midsentence, remembering the promise she had made to Gisela never to divulge her now-dead secret.

  “That means what?” Heinrich stooped down, trying to make eye contact. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s nothing, love. I don’t know what I’m saying, but I can’t leave her.” Beate lowered Gisela’s head, glanced to her friend’s belly and recoiled. “Someone stitched her up!”

  Heinrich squinted and blanched at the running stitches that formed a gruesome and misshapen X on Gisela’s belly. Bloodstained straw poked from the occasional seam. Beate fingered a stalk tip near her friend’s navel.

  “What was she doing out here?” Beate stood and hugged Heinrich, sobbing into his shoulder.

  “She was supposed to fit me for clothing in a few hours, after our deer hunt.”

  Beate and Heinrich whirled to see Lord Wilhelm, the baron’s son, looking at Gisela and not them.

  So shocked were Beate and Heinrich, they forewent bows and curtsies.

  “We found her like this. She’s my fiancée’s closest friend,” Heinrich said. “Surely you don’t think we did this.”

  Wilhelm, sitting atop a black courser, eyed the body.

  “So much for my new tunic being ready on time. And my brother’s,” he said as an afterthought and looked at the shaken pair. “And no, I don’t think you killed her. I would wager your dagger and clothes would be drenched if you had.”

  “Boy, sheath your sword,” commanded one of the two knights on horseback accompanying Wilhelm. They all were dressed similarly in chain-mail tunics covering woolen gambesons. Wilhelm, who wore a black bear-fur cloak, kept a longbow and a full quiver behind his back. The knight who had spoken aimed a crossbow at Heinrich’s chest.

  Heinrich did as ordered by the hulking knight, who in kind lowered his crossbow. Wilhelm brought back his cloak’s hood, revealing curly brown hair and brown eyes. Beate spotted his dimpled chin. It figures, she thought. Both of the baron’s sons—Wilhelm born a year before Beate and Heinrich; Karl, the younger, a year later—made the ladies swoon. Whether Karl was as arrogant as Wilhelm, Beate could only guess. She guessed yes.

  “We should get you back to the castle,” the knight said. “Let these two worry about informing the village.”

  “Patience, Otto,” Wilhelm replied. “You there, girl, look at me.”

  Frightened, but not enough not to feel insulted, she did. “Yes, my lord. My name is Beate.”

  “You’ve accompanied at times this poor girl to the castle to help fit the nobles, correct? I’ve seen you there. Normally I forget what peasants look like, but you and your friend are notable exceptions.”

  Beate controlled her breathing and tempered her rage. “I have, my lord, on occasions when the baron’s seamstresses were either unavailable or dead.”

  “Well, then you shall accompany our party back to the castle to fit me and my brother.”

  “But my friend!” she shoute
d, not in anger but disbelief.

  “Be careful the way you address Lord Wilhelm,” called the second knight in a tsk-tsk tone.

  “Easy, Hans. You too, Otto.” Wilhelm held up his hand to keep his guards at bay and continued with the peasants. “You have my sympathies, but my tunic takes precedence. You see, the baron wants my outfit ready for my brother’s wedding. Not only that, Karl has returned from a two-month trip to Spain, and I believe your unfortunate friend there did only cursory measurements on him. Much work needs doing on his. So you’ll need to fit him posthaste. Big event, you see. Then again, all of our events are big.”

  The knights laughed, as if on cue.

  “My lord, I respectfully ask you allow me to take my friend, Gisela—she has a name—back to her family. The entire village must know about this. To protect themselves.”

  Heinrich stayed quiet, eyeing Wilhelm, trying not to show his contempt. “With all respect, my lord, will Beate be paid for her services?”

  Beate looked at him, agog. “Heinrich!”

  “But of course your fine maiden will be paid—handsomely, I might add, as you’ve already been inconvenienced, and that is not lost on me,” Wilhelm said. “I would imagine your friend’s sewing kit is on her body somewhere, and I would suggest you find it. The regular seamstress is unable to perform her duties.”

  A small gasp escaped Beate and she covered her lips with her fingertips. “I beg your pardon for asking, but is she sick? Fighting plague? Smallpox? Typhoid?”

  Wilhelm feigned surprise. “Goodness no! Nothing that would directly endanger the castle’s denizens. Bandits merely raped and killed her. Dagger to the heart. Relatively painless. The same cannot be said of the fate met by her attackers. It’s fortunate the baron and his hunting party caught them in the act. Happened not far from here, actually. Their capture allowed us to test the new breaking wheel. I’m pleased to say it works. Splendidly.”

  Beate knew not what a breaking wheel was and never wanted to find out. “The seamstress’s name, my lord, what was it?”

  “Who knows? But you’ll have at your disposal her sewing kit that I’m certain contains instruments that your little ones do not. Now, I suggest we move along. I will send Hans here to warn the village and to return your friend to her family. Your blacksmith friend here—” Wilhelm looked Heinrich up and down, “—may escort you.”

  Heinrich leaned in to Beate’s ear before she could respond. “I know you’re hurting, and Gisela’s family will know about her, just as Lord Wilhelm just said.”

  “I can’t leave.” Her voice cracked.

  “I’m thinking about us too. This could be a chance for you to escape the village for something better. That’s what I’m hoping to do with my smithing. This is an opportunity for us, for our lives together after we marry.”

  “Learn how to whisper, Heinrich,” Wilhelm said. “But your man is correct. Good help is indeed hard to find, and, sadly, easily wasted.” He looked at Gisela. “So pretty too.”

  Beate wiped away her tears and glowered at Heinrich—he had a good point, but it came at a most inappropriate moment, and why he couldn’t see that, she’d never know.

  “It’s the Walborg family,” she called to Hans. “Ask for them. The villagers will know where to send you.” Beate kneeled for a final time next to her friend, feeling around Gisela’s dress and eventually finding a small leather satchel, loose and worn. Beate knew immediately what it held.

  “I’ll make sure your mother gets your kit back.” She kissed Gisela’s forehead and wept as Heinrich mounted Uli and pulled Beate up to sit behind him.

  “Place the girl over Hans’s horse. Secure her somehow,” Wilhelm said to Otto, an older knight near forty who kept his gray hair cut short, but his beard full to cover skin pockmarked by smallpox scars.

  Wilhelm reached into a small saddlebag and pulled out two gold coins, flipping one to Hans.

  “Return her to the village with the baron’s condolences, and give them the noble.” He turned to Beate and Heinrich and tossed the second coin their way. Heinrich caught it and was immediately told by Wilhelm, “Give it to your lady. It’s advance payment for her emergency services.” And then, speaking to them like children: “It’s a golden coin from England—my father obtained a bunch of them. Don’t ask me how.”

  The knights did as told. Otto awkwardly draped Gisela—her body forming a human horseshoe—on Hans’s horse’s rear, securing it with rope the big knight carried for such situations. Hans bounded away, one hand holding the reins, the other pressing down the body to keep it from falling.

  Wilhelm smiled at the disbelieving couple. “Now, Beate and Heinrich, let’s get on with our day. I’d like to return to the castle while there’s still light outside.”

  Heinrich handed the coin to Beate, who hid it without having to be told. They followed Wilhelm, with Otto bringing up the rear. The castle soon towered over them, and they waited for flunkies to lower the drawbridge and raise the portcullis.

  The massive spiked gate began its ascent and revealed a younger version of Wilhelm sitting atop a white horse.

  “Karl, so good to see you,” Wilhelm said. “I’ve brought a seamstress who will fit both you and me for your wedding.”

  Karl prodded his horse to amble to Wilhelm’s party. The baron’s youngest son, shorter and stockier than Wilhelm, had his brother’s brown eyes and hair, although Karl’s was receding, a sure sign he’d be bald in five years.

  “This isn’t the one I remember from the last time—Gisela, I believe.”

  “Yes, a pity. Gisela was murdered earlier this day—bandits most likely.” Wilhelm made it sound like a mild inconvenience as he described Gisela’s condition when they’d left her with Hans.

  “Her friend here—” Wilhelm nodded and flashed his eyes at her, for he’d clearly forgotten her name.

  “Beate.” She forced a smile.

  “Yes, Beate here is a seamstress who will take her place for now. And this is her lucky fiancé, Heinrich, who’s been gracious enough to bring her to the castle.”

  Karl, dressed like his brother in layers of linen, wool and chain-mail, with a brown fur cloak shrouding most of his body, looked them both over and spoke to Beate. “I am sorry to hear about your friend. She seemed like a very capable seamstress, and better person.”

  “That’s kind of you to say, my lord.” Beate detected sincerity in Karl’s voice that was nonexistent in anything that Wilhelm had previously said to her.

  “And Heinrich, it’s good of you to bring her here.” Karl noticed the way Heinrich caressed her hands that met around his waist as she hugged him. “And clearly you care for her. I wish I could say the same about my future wife.”

  “Let’s not get into that here, Karl. You’ll learn to enjoy your wife’s company as I have mine. And if she ever gets mad at you, simply provide her jewelry. That works for me. I think she picked a fight with me last week just to get a new bracelet.”

  “Arranged marriages are nonsense,” Karl muttered to himself, then looked at the peasants. “And you’re right, no sense bothering Beate and Heinrich with my woes. But I am happy for you, really. Please, as long as you’re here providing this service, I insist you have a nice meal. We can stable your horse and feed him too.”

  Heinrich and Beate stared at each other, not knowing how to accept such unforeseen generosity.

  “My little brother, what a softie.” Wilhelm looked to Beate. “He takes after our mother. I don’t believe our father has spoken to a peasant in a year, and that was merely an apology from over his shoulder after accidentally running one down with his horse. Always look both ways before you cross the road, you know.”

  Mumfred, the steward who oversaw the castle’s daily operations, wandered over to the gathering and was joined by two squires. Quick introductions and explanations were made.

  “Have the kitchen prepare t
hem anything they like,” Karl said. “The cooks are looking for something to bake, seeing that my parents aren’t here.”

  Mumfred, a tall bald man whose eyes were spaced little too far apart for Beate’s comfort, assessed the peasants. “Very well, my lord. I suppose anything will be a nice departure from moldy bread.”

  “That’s not necessary, Mummy.” Karl knew Mumfred despised the nickname. “They are my guests—our guests.” He looked at Wilhelm, who rolled his eyes. “And they shall be treated as such. And I prefer you feed them now so I can get in some hunting before it gets dark.” Karl tilted back his head so everyone would notice the longbow over his shoulder.

  “We just came back from one,” Wilhelm said. “We didn’t see a single deer out there.”

  Two knights rode their horses behind Karl and stopped. “Ready, my lord,” one said.

  “Then you weren’t looking hard enough,” Karl said to his brother, and then to the knights, “Victor, Mathias, let’s go!” Karl charged off, calling to Beate and Heinrich, “Enjoy your meal. See you soon.”

  “I suppose a little more time outdoors couldn’t hurt—you up for it, Otto?” said Wilhelm.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Just as Wilhelm prepared to depart, a fierce, prolonged roar bolted through the air from behind, whooshing by them and through the portcullis’s opening

  “Well, at least we know there’s one big animal out there,” Wilhelm said to Otto. “Let’s go find it!”

  None of them knew it, but the roaring thing was the reason Gisela—but not Hans—reached the village.

  Chapter Three

  Hans removed his hand from Gisela’s bouncing corpse—confident Otto had tied the body around the horse’s frame enough so that it wouldn’t slide off. He didn’t especially enjoy the prospect of mingling with peasants, but felt compassion, knowing he’d soon devastate a family without touching his sword.

  The girl was pretty, he thought. There’s no way she didn’t suffer.