“Leave that to me, Mother,” Rowan said, patting her hand.
Ella was excited. Thank God for Rowan. They had a plan! She watched him pull their weapons out of the mailbag and lay them on the table. There was his Glock, a switchblade, a lighter, and one ammo clip. Next to these, he set out the block of C4, a handful of blasting caps, the Taser, the two shotgun shells and both cellphones.
“Okay,” he said to Greta. “Now, tell me what’s going on these days church-wise.”
“Church-wise?”
“He means who’s beheading whom as a zealot or blasphemer. Has Luther shown up yet?”
“Yes, there are many Lutherans in Germany at this time.”
“But say, for example,” Rowan said, picking up the Taser and examining it, “if someone were accused of being a witch or warlock, what would happen to them?”
“They would be burned at the stake,” Greta said.
“That’s what I call discrediting,” Rowan said, putting the gun back on the table.
“You are going to make it appear that Axel is dabbling in the black arts?”
“That’s right.”
“Sounds good to me,” Ella said. “Sounds effin’ brilliant, in fact.”
“Thank you, darlin’,” Rowan said. “I appreciate that.”
“But how will you do such a thing?” Greta said. “Axel is well known in Heidelberg. The evidence would be instantly dismissed. His father would ensure that he never came to trial.”
“He might,” Rowan drawled, “if he got to thinking that maybe Axel wasn’t really his son.”
“What do you mean? Of course Axel is his son.”
“Really? You know that for a fact?”
Greta gave Ella a puzzled look.
Ella laughed. “Don’t look at me, Greta, I think it’s a great idea.”
“But how?” Greta said. “How can you possibly introduce or prove such an idea?”
“We can,” Rowan said, picking up his cellphone, “through the wonder of modern technology.”
Later, during a dinner of mostly bread, wine and a few vegetables from the garden, Greta seemed to be very pleased. She held both Rowan and Ella’s hands and said grace before they ate. Her smile beamed as she conversed with the nuns and novices seated at the table with them.
“How well did you know Heidelberg when you lived there?” she asked Ella after the other nuns had left.
“Mostly the clubs. A few restaurants, I guess.”
“You know the Church of the Holy Spirit, of course?”
“Sure, it’s the one at the end of the Altstadt. Very popular place for weddings and stuff.”
“The Church of the Holy Spirit is the most famous church in all of Heidelberg,” Greta said, her eyes bright with pride.
“You know it’s totally Protestant in 2012, right?”
“It was already Protestant when I lived in Heidelberg in the forties,” Greta said. “Even now we pass it back and forth. Before last year, we actually shared it. Are you familiar with the Catholic Church of the Jesuits? Imagine. I have lived in Heidelberg all my life and attended Mass there many times. Yet I was able to witness the beginning of its construction in 1612. Of course, I must keep to myself the fact that in 1872 it will get a beautiful new bell tower.”
“Must be a lonely feeling living here, knowing what you do about the future,” Ella said. “No one else can truly understand you.”
“It is the exact opposite of that, Ella. From the minute I landed in this time, I have never felt more at home or more understood in my life.”
Axel rolled off the sobbing wench and pushed her from the filthy pallet. His men, who were lounging around the room waiting their turn, laughed at their leader’s expression of surprise as the girl attempted to escape.
“Catch her, boys!” Axel said, laughing. “Better’n a greased cat.”
One of the men reached out to capture the wretch—a poor village girl who had been taken two mornings ago on her way to school. She instantly sagged in his arms, compliant and hopeless as the man began to undo the laces on the front of his trousers.
Axel stretched and walked over to where the other three men stood, watching. He held out his hand for a flask.
“She had already been had,” he said to his first lieutenant.
“Not surprising. She likely has brothers and a father.”
“Disgusting,” Axel said. He drank from his flask and idly watched the girl’s rape. As passive as she was, the man assaulting her still felt a need to slap her.
“Hey!” Axel’s lieutenant complained. “Leave something for the rest of us! I like my women to be breathing when I fuck them!”
“I am sick of these sluts,” Axel said. As he watched the girl, he remembered the strange, dark-haired novice from the convent, the one who had looked him straight in the eyes. His pulse quickened at the thought of her naked and unwilling beneath him.
He finished the flask and tossed it into a corner of the room where it broke into shards. “Why have we not returned to the convent?” he said.
“You must only give the order,” his man replied. He was untying the laces on his trousers as he anticipated that his turn was near.
“And why must I do that?” Axel said, grabbing the man by the arm, preventing him from going to the girl who was now no longer crying but stretched out silent and motionless on the dirt floor. He indicated to another watching man that he could take his turn.
“Perhaps, lord,” the lieutenant said, “you would prefer to be made a surprise gift of these young virgins?”
Axel grinned and gave the man a punishing grip on the arm with his fingers. “I want the head hag alive at least at the start,” he said. “But there is one who must be taken alive and untouched.”
His lieutenant nodded. “We all know the one,” he said. “The one who stood and stared at you in the market.”
“Yes,” Axel said, licking his lips. “I have never seen a woman look at a man in such a way. If I don’t end up carving those eyes out of her face, I will keep her chained in the dungeon as a pet.” He laughed and his gang of men joined in. Soon the hall rang with their howls.
Rowan kept a sharp eye out in all directions as Ella straightened the tablecloth on the little patch of lawn on the bank of the Nekker. Instead of eating their lunch with the others in the convent today, they had decided to escape into the fresh air and the countryside just outside the city. He sat on the ground feeling the exhaustion that came from a morning’s hard physical work.
“You look tired,” she said, handing him a sandwich and sitting down next to him.
He smiled at her and for a moment thought of skipping lunch in favor of a different indulgence. He noticed that Ella looked more vibrant than he had ever seen her in Atlanta. He wondered if that was the effect of living in Germany—or of 1620.
“I am, a little, I guess,” he said. “But it’s a good tired.”
“I know,” she said, pouring beer into two cups for them. “That’s how I feel. I never had this in my other life.”
“Thinking about staying, are you?”
“No.”
“I was thinking how alive you seem now. During this time.”
“It’s probably just fear for my life. Back in Atlanta, I hardly ever felt like I was going to die as many times during a single day.”
“Unless you went to Starbucks,” he said.
Ella looked at him with what appeared to be an uncomfortable, almost guilty expression.
“I hate how we fizzled out,” she said.
“Me, too.”
“If I’d stayed, do you think we’d…you know?”
“Who knows? We’re doing pretty good right now.”
“And when we get back to 2012?”
Rowan put his beer on the grass next to him and didn’t answer. What did she want him to say? That they’d stay married? That they’d date? They had started down that road once before. It hadn’t gone so well.
“Guess we’ll just have to wait and see
,” he said.
Ella put the remnants of their lunch in a large wicker basket. Whenever they weren’t talking about their relationship, they seemed to get along wonderfully. He teased her and praised her and took possession of her like they’d been together for years. He acted like he loved her company, respected her opinions, desired her in all ways that mattered. In fact, being with him this last week at the convent had been nothing short of exquisite.
She didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it before. The fact was, she loved him. She had probably loved him from the moment he’d kicked open the doors to Starbucks and rescued her.
Forget Starbucks, she thought. He had come to rescue her from across centuries. And maybe, just maybe, that meant he loved her too. At least a little.
The rest of the day was a long one filled with more hard work and conversation as Rowan, Ella and Greta fine-tuned their plan to discredit Axel to his father. After dinner, they met in the kitchen before heading for their separate chambers for the night.
“Well, one thing’s certain, we can’t do anything from here,” Ella said. “So, first thing, I’ve got to get inside the castle.”
“That ain’t happening,” Rowan said.
“I can’t gather intel from the convent, Rowan. I need to be in the castle.”
“I said no.”
“Okay, Rowan, you do know we’re not really a product of these times, right? You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Guess again, Ella.”
“Greta, do you have any ideas? Serving girl? Cook? Laundress?”
“You don’t know how to do any of those things, Ella, in a way that would not get you either burned at the stake or thrown into an insane asylum,” Greta said.
“Okay, not being too helpful here, you two. I need suggestions.”
“You can’t go undercover at the castle,” Rowan said. “You know what they do to pretty girls. You’ll be on a boat to Istanbul before dinnertime.”
“Your husband is correct,” Greta said. “You cannot go as a pretty girl.”
“Okay, good,” Ella said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What kind of service can I offer as a boy, maybe an addlepated boy, so there’s less expectation from me? Would that be believable?”
“None of this is believable!” Rowan slammed a fist on the table, causing a dish to fall to the stone floor and shatter.
“Not helpful, Rowan,” Ella said. “I don’t need appalled indignation or arguments here. I need fucking suggestions. Sorry, Greta.”
“Do you know anything about horses?” Greta asked.
“I used to ride in competition as a teenager. You’re thinking stable hand or something? But how would that give me access to the house?”
“You’ll be within the compound. It’s a start.”
“Jesus, Ella!” said Rowan. “Can you imagine what they’d do to a stable boy found wandering around the family’s bedchambers?”
“I get it, Rowan. It’s dangerous. If you have a better suggestion that won’t get me raped, sold into slavery, or shut up in a seventeenth century loony bin, I’m all ears.”
“Let me do it. I’ll dress up as the stable boy.”
Ella shook her head. “No good. First, you don’t speak German and second, there’s nothing boy about you.”
“She has a point, I’m afraid,” Greta said.
“Okay,” Ella said. “So, it’s me as a stable boy. Greta, do you know someone who might be able to recommend me over there?”
“I think so,” she said, looking unconvinced.
“Awesome. Get them on that, please. I’ll need clothes, too, if you can help with that. We should move quickly. “
Greta left the room and Ella turned to Rowan who had begun to pace in agitation.
“Okay, Rowan.” She picked up the switchblade from the table and held it out to him. “I need you to cut my hair off.”
She waited for him to hold his hand out for the knife. It was the moment that said, right or wrong, good or bad, he was on board. The expression on his face nearly made her lose her conviction, he looked so unhappy. His eyes never left hers as he held his hand out and took the knife from her.
“It’ll grow back,” he said hoarsely. More to convince himself than her, she knew.
Chapter Fourteen
The plan was simple. It was the execution of it that could get them all killed. Ella would be inside the castle, listening and observing, in order to report anything that happened. She would plant Rowan’s lighter to implicate Axel as a dabbler in the black arts. Meanwhile, Greta would get the monks to send an anonymous letter to the Protestant Magistrate suggesting that Axel was a warlock. Finally, they would manufacture the necessary evidence to support the idea that Axel was not Krüger’s true heir.
Early on the day that Ella was to present herself at the castle, Greta helped her into her disguise. They had put much work into Ella’s cover. She was to go into the castle as a virtual mute, able to make noises but not speak. She strapped her breasts down before she climbed into the filthy clothes Greta had found for her. Ella pulled a ragged shirt over her head. Her leggings were baggy so as not to reveal her shape and she wore thin leather slippers.
“How do I look?” she asked, holding out her arms.
Greta eyed her critically and raked her fingers through Ella’s hair. “We need to cut a few more sections out of your hair,” she said.
Ella walked over to the kitchen counter and picked up a knife. She handed it to Greta. “Do it.”
As she held the knife, Greta looked into Ella’s eyes. “When I see the lengths that you are willing to go in order to help me, to help us, I know that God sent you to me. I know God answered my prayers by allowing your sacrifice.” She dropped the knife and sank into a chair, her hands covering her face. Her shoulders shook with her sobs.
Ella knelt next to her. “Greta, don’t,” she said. “I don’t know if God sent me but I know this is exactly where I need to be. I haven’t sacrificed anything yet. God willing, I won’t have to.”
Greta wiped her eyes and tried to smile at Ella. “There is always a sacrifice,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“During the war, I worked in Manheim and lived in the dormitory with the unmarried girls, but I went home to my mother in Heidelberg on the weekends. I was always very Catholic. I went to mass every day that I could. The day I came to this century, I was walking home from a late mass. It was raining, but I did not care. I had prayed and begged God to guide me, but He did not answer.” She looked at Ella and smiled. “Until He did.”
“What happened?” Ella said.
“I was so upset, I don’t think I was even looking where I was going. But of course I knew the way home by heart. When the lightning crashed and the world lit up, I thought it was one of the Allies’ bombs. They said they would not harm Heidelberg, but we were always afraid. When the light faded to darkness, I could tell that something was different. That everything was different. I was here. I had passed over to this time.”
“What were you crying about that got you so upset?”
“It is shameful to reveal,” Greta said in a whisper. “I had received news that day that my husband, who for so many years we believed had died in the war, was coming home.”
“You didn’t want him to come home?”
Greta looked up at her. “Of course I wanted him to be alive! I thanked God that he had been spared.”
“But you didn’t want to be married to him.”
“I was so young,” she said. “I married him because my stepfather insisted. We would get extra food coupons, we would get extra favors because of the honor of his service, and all of that came to pass. I got the good job in Mannheim because of my status.”
“But you didn’t love him.”
“His name was Georg. No, I didn’t love him.”
“So how is it you became a nun?”
“I was lucky,” Greta said. “Like you, I quickly realized what must have happened, but unlike you, I was e
cstatic. Can you see that, for me, it was an escape I couldn’t possibly have hoped for? Not just from Georg but from the war, too. As you know, the time portal is by the garden gate. I arrived at night. I knocked on the convent door and was taken in. I was fed and given warm clothes and a bed for the night. I was told that the Mother Superior was very ill. In fact, she was dying.”
Ella picked up the knife and handed it to Greta who then took a handful of Ella’s hair in her fingers and sawed it off.
“It hurts me to do this, Ella,” she said.
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” Ella said. “Please continue with your story.”
“I must have been mad,” Greta said. “After only a few hours, I asked to be presented to the Mother. I told her I was sent by God to lead the convent and that He bade me request her support in this.”
“Ballsy.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, please, go on,” Ella said. “She agreed to support you?”
“She believed in me,” Greta said. “I lied and told her I had been sent to her as her replacement and that I had come from very far away which is why my language sounded so strange to her. She was tired and was ready to go to our Lord. She had been fretting, as I surmised she must be—as I would have been—about the safety of her flock, once she was gone.” Greta cut another piece of hair and fluffed the remnant so it stuck out. “Ella, I wish you could have seen the peace that came over her face when she believed I was sent to take her place.”
“And it was truly what you wanted?”
“Oh, yes!” Greta reached for Ella’s hand and looked into her eyes. “Since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a Sister of Mercy. There was no question, it was right for me. My job from that moment forward was to make it right for the convent.”
“So she presented you to everyone as her replacement?”
“She did. We made some excuses for my outlandish clothing and to explain why I had waited to announce my arrival. She died very soon after that and the sisters never questioned my authority. That was twenty years ago now.”
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