AHMM, June 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Gwen looked for a phone, opened drawers, hoping. Nothing but stacks of blank stationery. Not even a TV or computer. Of course not. Who knew what dear Anastasia might see on TV or what corrupting Internet sites she might access, what inappropriate e-mails she might receive from wild boys.

  She searched the closet, found nothing of use. Only a message on the wall, written in black ink behind Anastasia's neatly hung jumpers. Help me, somebody, it read. Help me get out of here, God. Somebody.

  Gwen felt even more wobbly on her feet. Stumbling, she lunged for the desk and sat. The lemonade-stand girl said Anastasia had fallen out of a window. Now Gwen believed that was true. Only it couldn't have been this one because just outside the pane she could see corrosion on the screws that held the bars in place. These bars had been there for some time. Gwen pushed her forehead against the glass. It was a significant drop to the ground, a concrete walkway below.

  What else had the little girl said? Mrs. Creel took too much interest. Too much interest in the girl, her blond hair. The child's mother had sensed something not quite right about Mrs. Creel's attentions. She'd ordered her daughter away for good reason.

  The neat, square room seemed to be closing in. “Thought you were trapped before,” Gwen mumbled. “You didn't know what trapped was.” Her life with Walt on the outside seemed the essence of freedom. She stared at the bars outside the window. She tried to calm herself, ward off the creeping chill that was taking hold of her heart, the growing terror.

  She ran into the bathroom to scout some means of escape. There was no door to the hall, only Anastasia's stained glass window above the toilet. Afternoon sunlight sliced through, pouring the rich reds, yellows, and greens of Rapunzel's robe onto the white tile floor.

  "Poor Anastasia,” she said. “Buried alive.” But what a striking work of art. Rapunzel's face was a serene blank as she lowered her golden hair out the medieval-looking window.

  Gazing at the picture, Gwen realized that no shadow of bars showed on the other side. What had the mother said about hiring workers? “Afterwards,” she'd said. After Anastasia's death. Of course, the original window had to be replaced. This was the window Anastasia had broken, climbed out of to make her escape. An ordinary bathroom window. Her mother wouldn't let her go out with her friends, kept her from her own prom, but Anastasia had tried to escape anyway. She'd tied sheets together, looped one end around the toilet seat. But the knots hadn't held, or she might have eased through the window clumsily. She fell, broke her neck. Gwen just knew. She could see it now.

  This was the only way out for Gwen, too. Anastasia's beautiful work of art would have to be broken. A shame. And there would still be that sheer drop on the other side.

  Gwen sat on the edge of the tub to consider other options. She could simply wait until Mrs. Creel brought her dinner, rush past her, knock her for a loop on the way out. Or she could start screaming now, though without neighbors in back, no one would hear. Also, the noise she made would be sure to bring the witch up.

  She could be poised at the door, ready to run past her. She remembered the woman's vicelike grip. Surely Gwen could win a physical battle with Mrs. Creel if it came to that. But then, Anastasia never had.

  Mrs. Creel said she'd fix her favorite meal and bring it later. Maybe she drugged Anastasia's food, added a narcotic to put her to sleep. She might do the same for Gwen.

  Then again, Mrs. Creel might forget dinner—bounce into her yellow convertible and drive to never-never land, forget all about Gwen. Meanwhile, who would know she was missing? Gwen told her mother not to expect a call. Walt wasn't due back for weeks. If he did manage to phone, he wouldn't be surprised if she didn't answer. Even if she were missed, no one would dream she was locked in a young girl's bedroom on Rosethorne Place—Rapunzel Number Two.

  The sun brightened, throwing the stained-glass reds like blood onto her clasped hands as she sat on the tub's edge. Her hands were shaking. Red and shaking.

  Gwen eyed Rapunzel. She could tie the sheets together, loop one end through the toilet seat as Anastasia had. Tie tight knots. She stood on top of the toilet to gauge how far up she'd have to hoist herself to climb out.

  She felt relieved to hear Piccolo barking again. But who knew what that crazy woman might do to her dog.

  In the bedroom Gwen found a heavy glass paperweight, a butterfly preserved inside its bubbly core. She stripped the bed, brought the pillow along.

  She tied the sheets first, used the white shower curtain too, knotting it around the toilet seat. She jammed the desk chair at a tilt beneath the bedroom doorknob so that Mrs. Creel couldn't enter once the noise of shattering glass brought her up from the belly of the house.

  She stood on the toilet seat, paperweight in hand, and prayed Piccolo wasn't right under the window; then she hammered Anastasia's beautiful stained-glass portrait, once, twice, five times. In big chunks, Rapunzel popped out of the thin lead soldering and fell. The initial crash of each large piece was succeeded by a scattershot tinkling of splintered glass—a delicate, even apologetic sound.

  Gwen was pleased at how easily the soldering gave way to her punches with the paperweight. She molded Anastasia's pillow over the jagged opening and hoisted herself up, poked her head outside. Below, Piccolo stood well away from the broken glass like a tiny inquisitive statue, more miniature dachshund than she'd ever looked before, emitting chopped, fearful cries like question marks. The ground, a shimmering rainbow of color, looked so far away, Gwen felt she was peering through the wrong end of binoculars.

  She closed her eyes against the vertiginous scene and rehearsed what she must do. Turn around, sit on the sill, sheet gripped in her hands. Bow low, scrunching up her body. Get her head out first, then liberate her legs. Move out backwards and scale the wall like a human fly as far as the sheets would allow. Then let go. Flex knees on impact.

  Once on the ground, she would have to break out of the brick-walled yard. The only way to freedom might be through the house. If she had to, she would pick up chunks of river stone from the flower bed and hurl them through every pane of glass in Mrs. Creel's beautiful bay window. She would smash her way out to the street. Rapunzel was dead; no prince was coming to the rescue.

  Hands shaking, Gwen risked a last look at Piccolo, so far below. The tiny dog only stared up quietly, like an audience at the circus watching a high-wire act.

  The sparkling colors coating the cement walkway made Gwen think of spun sugar on a birthday cake. But a fake cake, like one used in a play. When she got home, she would give more serious thought to the play that was her life. Yes, she was ready to break some windows, crash out of Brigadoon.

  Mrs. Creel was pounding on the bedroom door. Gwen could hear her beating the wood with her fist.

  "I'm coming,” she called down to Piccolo. She turned her back on the yard, gritted her teeth, and tightened her grip on the sheet rope. “I swear,” she cried out before pushing off from the sill, “this time Anastasia's going to win."

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  Copyright © 2005 by Elaine Menge.

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  Who's Going to Hang? by Joyce Gibb

  Dry eyed, Eldreda gently dropped a spray of a late-blooming red rose down onto the tiny wrapped bundle that lay at the bottom of the small grave. She was beyond tears by now, and when Brother Devyn put his bony arm around her shoulder, she barely felt it. Surely this was all a dream, a very bad dream that would fade away when she awoke. But she was so tired, so very tired.

  "Come away now, child.” Brother Devyn's soft, high voice came as if through a cloud. “You can help her no more now, and we know she is resting peacefully in God's hand. The brothers will take care of what remains to be done here.” He nodded toward the half dozen other white-robed monks who stood quietly by.

  One of them reached down and picked up a shovel that was lying behind the mound of dark silty earth at the far edge of the grave. A great shudder ran through Eldreda's body at the finality of the shovel. She
buried her face once again in Brother Devyn's thin shoulder and allowed him to turn her away. The two walked slowly out of the far corner of the burial ground, back toward the great abbey church.

  Had it been only yesterday that her infant daughter had sunk from fussiness into a sudden burning, dull fever? Frightened because her cool damp cloths and gentle herbs were not stemming the illness's rapid shift, Eldreda had gathered her babe in a blanket and run the short distance across the fens to Barlings where her friend Brother Devyn presided over the infirmary. But even his great skill was not enough to draw the heat from Rosamund's tiny body, and in the dark hour before dawn the life burned out of her. Rosamund. That endless moment of waiting for the next rattling breath that never came—it was a memory that would be etched forever onto the stone that was Eldreda's heart.

  "Sit down here, my child.” Devyn stopped beside a wooden bench near the entrance to the monks’ cloister. “We must think what you are to do now."

  "I don't want to do anything,” she mumbled, as she dropped heavily to the seat, hunched into her grief. Her throat was so tight her voice scarcely sounded like her own.

  "I know,” he replied, “this is the hardest loss any woman ever knows. And coming when your husband is away...” The monk shook his tonsured red head and sighed.

  "I don't want to do anything,” Eldreda repeated. “Rosamond is gone. I don't know when Merton will return and I can't even let him know that our child is dead.” She dropped her face into her hands.

  Her husband, who tended the abbey's fishponds, also set eel traps all through the fens’ muddy waterways. He had gone off to the port town of St. Botolph to work for a while on the crew of a large fishing boat that plied the North Sea, hoping to earn enough to buy a better small dory for himself. That was shortly after the babe's birth on the day after Lammas, now many weeks ago. She saw in her mind's eye his cheerful wave as he set his shabby cockleboat firmly downstream into the River Witham's sluggish current with powerful oar strokes, surging around a bend and out of sight. Out of sight for how long?

  Eldreda drew a shuddering breath. “I've lost too much. I can only think to wait for Merton to come home.” She choked back the keening cry that tried to escape through her clenched jaw. She couldn't allow herself to break down. If tears ever started she would drown in them.

  Wildly, she thought of drowning in milk. Eldreda's breasts prickled and ached, and stains had leaked onto the front of her tunic. Rosamond had not suckled all the day before she—died? She could not be dead! So short a time ago she had been a warm, squirming bundle, nuzzling her rosebud mouth toward her mother's dark nipple already oozing drops of rich milk in response to the sound of her baby-grunts. Rosamond. Rosebud mouth. She tried to draw a deep steadying breath, but it became a gasping hiccup.

  "Do you have some dandelion root?” she asked. “I hurt. I need to dry up this milk."

  Brother Devyn sighed, fingering the beads in his lap. “You may not want to do that. I have just learned that the woman who was nursing Lady Nicholaa de la Haye's firstborn son has died. Quite strangely, I might add. But the boy hungers, and you ache with milk to spare. God may have opened a path for you both."

  Eldreda knew of the Lady Nicholaa, daughter of an old landed family whose roots were already deep in the soil of Lincolnshire long before the Norman conquerors came. It was a de la Haye who had founded this great abbey many years ago in the time of King Stephen, and she remembered hearing the name recited in prayers here. Barlings owed much to the family.

  "But I must stay here, wait for Merton."

  "You would not be far. Lady Nicholaa bides now at her manor at Scotstorne, just a few miles from here. When Merton returns he will surely come here, and I can tell him where you are."

  "But I don't know where Scotstorne is.” She could not think. Her head hurt with the effort.

  "I will take you there now, my child, if you are willing to go. Lady Nicholaa has sent for me to inquire about the nursemaid who died yesterday. She fears that there was some foul play, perhaps a poisoning, and she hopes I can tell what befell the poor woman. She is ever loyal to those who serve her, and will not rest until some justice is served."

  "Should I go?” Eldreda asked plaintively. “I cannot think what is right."

  "Then trust my judgment for now. At the very least you can keep her babe alive until some other arrangement can be made,” Devyn said reassuringly. “It will not bring your Rosamund back, but you can give another little one a chance to live."

  The fog in her mind lifted a little. She must go. Brother Devyn was right: When Merton came back he would go to the abbey if she were not in their cottage. She could not bear to lose him too.

  Eldreda rose from the bench. “There are things I will need from home."

  "Lady Nicholaa will send someone to collect them for you. We should be away for Scotstorne at once. Young Richard cries. His blood may be noble but his small belly is as empty as any pauper's."

  * * * *

  Nicholaa paced the floor of the hall as young Richard slept in her arms, a small swaddled bundle. Thanks be to Blessed Mary that he—and she—had at least some momentary respite, even though his sleep was one born of exhaustion after hours of ever more anguished crying. She was beset with frustration, anger, and fear.

  Fear most of all, for her child. Frustration over this mortal problem of how to feed him, as well as the troubling mystery of Nelda's strange and sudden death. The kitchenmaid had been so smoothly nursing both Richard and her own older babe, a boy already beginning to leave her breast and take bread softened in broth. Nicholaa's jaw tightened. Whoever had made one child motherless and endangered another would hang under her angry justice in her manor court. That was certain.

  The babe stirred in her arms and she made an effort to relax. Angry she might be, but it did not help the child for her to be stirred up. She must keep an air of calm around him.

  Where was Brother Devyn? She had sent for him hours ago. God willing, the monk so wise in the ways of healing would be able to discern what had caused a healthy, buxom young woman to sicken suddenly and die within an hour. It could only be a poison. From the how of it surely she could ferret out the who.

  Before leaving the night before in response to an urgent summons to Lincoln Castle, Nicholaa's husband, Sheriff Gerard de Camville, had sent men out around the countryside to seek some woman nursing a child who could take over Richard's feeding. There was no time to spare with such a tiny one. The best that had been found so far was a nanny-goat with her kid. Goat's milk was known to be a little easier for an infant than that of a cow, and cook had brought in a fresh cup thinned with water. Nicholaa dripped a bit of it into her son's small mouth now and then, but she knew she dare not give him overmuch or he would sicken. He was still so very young, not yet two weeks old.

  She paused in the doorway and looked out. This country manor had only a stout wooden wall to define its yard, no great battlements and bailey such as there were at Lincoln Castle where her family had been hereditary castellans for generations. When her father had died without a son, the office had passed to her, the eldest daughter.

  Ah! There coming through the gate were two figures, one in white monk's garb—Brother Devyn at last. She sighed with relief. Now that he was here they could at least begin on a path to justice.

  And with him a woman. Whoever she was, if he had brought her she would be welcome. Nicholaa called to a servant to bring bread and cheese and ale to refresh the visitors.

  * * * *

  "Lady Nicholaa! I bring you good news!” Brother Devyn hailed her and waved his staff as he approached the stairs leading up to the hall door. A broad smile broke his thin face.

  "Come then,” she beckoned. “We are sore in need of good news here.” As she shifted the swaddled babe to her other arm, he began a mewling wail.

  Devyn gestured to the young woman with him to precede him up the stairs. She moved stiffly, looking only downward. Who was she? Not finely dressed, but clean in appearance
and sturdy in stature. Strands of pale gold hair, lighter even than Nicholaa's own, escaped from the thick braid down her back, and bespoke their common old Saxon ancestry.

  As the two stepped into the cool dimness of the hall, Brother Devyn made a small bow and said, “This is Eldreda, my lady. She has just this day suffered a bitter tragedy and buried her young babe. Knowing you have lost your wet nurse, I brought her with me. She is willing to feed your Richard, if you wish it."

  Relief flooded Nicholaa's heart. She smiled as she had feared she might never do again.

  "If I wish it! Of course I wish it, and most of all this young man wishes it! You cannot begin too soon for him!” She drew the younger woman closer and reached out to lift Eldreda's chin, searching deeply into light blue eyes that were icy with pain. She proffered the now screaming bundle, and as Eldreda gathered young Richard into her arms, Nicholaa saw her anguished face soften a little.

  "Oh, my lady ... where should I sit with him?” Eldreda asked, her voice quavering a little as she settled the babe into the crook of her arm and began to loosen the lacings of her tunic. Already his distress was turning to eager snufflings and rootings with the smell of proper milk near.

  "Right here.” Nicholaa led them to a stool in the corner, tears in her own eyes. “The Blessed Mary be praised that you are here. I am only sorry that you have suffered so terrible a loss."

  Brother Devyn stood by the doorway and smiled.

  * * * *

  An uglier business awaited them. With the pressing matter of Richard's sustenance settled, Nicholaa had immediately led Brother Devyn out of the hall and around the side of the manor. “Now to what I summoned you for."

  She strode purposefully toward a small woodshed beyond the kitchen. Despite the chasm between their stations in life, she had felt an immediate connection with Eldreda that fostered a comforting confidence. No such sense of connection had existed with poor Nelda, now lying shrouded on a trestle in the shed.