Krüger never relaxed the grimace on his face but he waved away his other counselors, who scurried from the room.
“I am busy, Christof,” he said, picking up the barbed slug and rolling it over in his hand.
“I’ve come to ask you again, Father, to reconsider the toll on the Brücke Bridge.”
“Not this again,” Krüger said with disgust.
“Father, the villagers who live across the Nekker are starving because they cannot bring their wares to the marketplace to sell.”
“They should pay the toll then.”
“They are poor, Father,” Christof said, his voice reedy and halting. “They are starving, separated from a chance to live without poverty, by an uncrossable bridge—”
“Enough!” his father roared. “Come to me once more with this mewling petition of yours and I will throw ten peasants into the Nekker. Do you hear me?”
His face red, Christof bowed to his father.
“One hundred peasants! A village of filthy peasants! That will put an end to their poverty!”
As Christof fled from the room, he knocked into his older brother, Axel, in the doorway.
“Watch where you go, worm!” his brother snarled at him. “The touch of you sickens me!” He gave Christof a push that set him stumbling out the door. Christof fell hard on the stone threshold and caught himself with outstretched arms. As the heavy door slammed behind him, Christof could hear his brother and father laughing heartily together.
After a week on the road, even the dead rudbeckia in the front porch planter was a welcome sight. Rowan tossed his car keys in a dish on the front hall table. He listened to the silence of his apartment for a moment. He still couldn’t help monitoring his tactical surrounding before relaxing. For the last three weeks, he’d done little else, twenty-four seven. Now he went to the refrigerator and took out a beer. As important as Rowan firmly believed it to be, there had to be few things more boring than providing witness security—until the moment it turned so nonboring that it killed you.
It had been the worst possible assignment at the worst possible time. Witness security was dull but required vigilance. Rowan figured it was just about the hardest part of his job: trying to keep his mind from wandering when, on the face of it, there looked to be nothing going on. Spending seven days watching and waiting in order to keep his witness secure until the man could testify gave Rowan’s mind all the time in the world to wonder what was going on with Ella.
He took a drink of his beer.
Thank God the divided attention hadn’t added up to a dead witness.
He flipped through the first-class mail but nothing was interesting enough to require a more in-depth inspection. He went to the kitchen and pulled out a frozen dinner, peeled off the cardboard lid and slid it in the microwave. He stood in front of the oven, drinking his beer and watching the oven interior rotate. He turned and looked in the direction of the living room where the television set was on. A wave of depression washed over him.
The phone call to Ella’s office had revealed that she had given notice the same day she called him. Something had happened that made her quit and reach out to him for help.
Not to get all dramatic here but I need you, Rowan.
He opened the door off the kitchen that led to the narrow balcony and took a deep breath. The microwave finished cooking with a loud bell but he made no move to open it.
He had talked with the Heidelberg police and given them Ella’s father’s contact number. He had asked them to start a missing person’s search and to check out her apartment. He hated doing all this from this distance—and along with that bat shit crazy old man of hers—but when the report came back it confirmed there was no one in the apartment and no sign of foul play.
That sick feeling in his gut that he’d been nursing for the last three weeks was getting worse by the minute and all the beer and mind numbing work or mental calisthenics wasn’t helping a damn.
Shit, Ella, where are you? And what the hell am I supposed to do about it?
As Greta lifted the heavy water bucket, she could hear that men were coming. A ribbon of fear needled into her heart and she dropped the bucket with a thud, narrowly missing her foot.
It was too soon! She turned toward the convent and gauged how long it would take her to get back and warn the others. She made a fast calculation. Everyone was in the convent, either working or praying. Axel would gather them all up in one swoop.
“Oberschwester!” The voice was high but definitely male. Mother Superior!
Greta’s knees weakened and she let out a huge breath. She turned to face the nobleman and his two knights as they entered the small convent courtyard. The nobleman’s boots were polished leather. His short jacket was a rich forest green of boiled wool. He smiled when he saw Greta, quickly dismounted and walked toward her.
“Christof,” she said, holding out her hand to him.
He grabbed her hand and hesitated, as if trying to decide whether or not to bring it to his lips. In the end, he just squeezed it and returned it to her.
“Greta,” he said. “I feared I would not find you well.”
“Your brother…”
“I know, I know. My shame grows with the knowledge of his crimes.”
Greta rubbed her hand against her rough woolen habit. Christof’s face was pale and his hair a very light blond. He looked nothing like his dark haired brother. Greta always felt this was an extra point in Christof’s favor.
“The novice he took,” Greta said. “Have you seen her?”
“I am sorry, Oberschwester,” Christof said, shaking his head. “I have seen nothing.”
And prefer it that way? Greta couldn’t help but think.
“She is just a child, my lord,” she said. “Not even fifteen.”
She could see she was making him uncomfortable. She wondered if he knew how uncomfortable the young girl was being made.
“Greta,” he said, holding a hand up. “I can do nothing about that. I am here to warn you that Axel talks of little else but the destruction of your convent.”
Greta forced herself to smile. This was not news to her. She had this news carved on her arm and in her heart. Yet, Christof felt he was helping. Clearly, he wanted to be helping.
He took her hand and held it to his chest.
“Greta, let me save you,” he said. “I can take you to my place in the country. You will be safe there.”
It was all she could do not to snatch her hand from him. She took a long breath and prayed for patience.
“And leave my nuns here to be raped and killed by your brother?” She eased her hand from his grasp.
Christof stared at her. He held his hand, empty, to his chest. “What can I do, Mother?” he said.
“Pray for us.” Greta said, bending to lift the water bucket.
“I do! But how will my prayers keep you safe from him? He is obsessed with you. It is all he talks about. He will burn the convent. At least send your nuns away.”
“Where? Most of them have no home but this one.”
“If they stay here, they will die. You will die.”
“I know,” Greta said.
“I couldn’t bear it.”
“You will,” Greta said and then she softened. “Thank you, my lord. You have risked much to come here to warn me. I am grateful.”
He reached out to her again and she put the bucket between them.
“And now you must go, please,” she said.
“I should just kidnap you, myself,” Christof said. “Throw you over my horse and take you to the country.”
“But you are not like that,” Greta said, her eyes narrowing. “You are not like your brother even if your motives are better.”
“No.”
“Goodbye, Christof,” she said, smiling sadly at him. She turned and walked to the convent leaving him standing there and watching her go.
There was a game Ella liked to play.
Whenever she left the convent, which was
infrequently and for only very short trips, she tried to picture where the nightclubs and supermarkets of 2012 were. She tried to remember how she felt walking down the main corridor of the Altstadt with Heidi, high from too many Appletinis and giggling over nothing, stumbling on the uneven pedestrian walkway and hanging onto each other. Now, as she walked down the same cobblestone walkways, splattered with horse and cow dung, she tried to imagine that Heidi was lunching on the corner just ahead. When she got back to her own time, she would remember the juggler who stopped to piss in the street right around Ella’s favorite konditerei. Of course, she would never be able to look at the square in front of the Church of the Holy Spirit the same way.
Each time, she had to beg Greta to let her go out on the streets. Ella argued that she was unarmed and promised not to speak. She knew Greta felt it was too big a risk to take, but in the end, Ella insisted.
Today, she was walking with an elderly nun and a novice. Their goal was the market at Altstadt where they would trade potatoes and turnips from their garden for wine and cheese. It was generally believed that because Greta was so tall, she was instantly recognizable from a distance and therefore should refrain from going into town herself.
The weather was clear and bright and Ella practically skipped, she was so eager to be walking. Kitchen work had left her shoulders sore and aching at night but it was a poor substitute for the full body aerobic classes she used to take. Ella was careful to walk slowly and look directly downward but she stole periodic glances of the castle and the shops that lined the road past Bismarckplatz toward the main square.
The old nun she walked with was mute, or so Ella assumed since she had never heard her speak. The young girl seemed as eager as Ella to be out, although she was well trained to keep her eyes down with her hands on the empty wicker basket she carried.
They had barely entered the marketplace when it happened.
Ella, grateful that there appeared to be nothing bloody and upsetting happening on the raised platform in the square in front of the cathedral, had forgotten to keep her eyes down and was drinking in the sights and sounds of 1620 Heidelberg. It wasn’t until a man roughly grabbed her from behind that she even realized that she had been smiling—a sign of madness in 1620.
“A juicy one!” the man shouted, pawing at Ella with heavy hands. She glanced at the elder nun who seemed resolute in keeping her eyes on the ground and who continued toward the market ignoring what was happening to Ella. The young novice never looked up.
The man twisted Ella around in his arms and a foul blast of breath smelling of decayed teeth and his breakfast hit her full in the face. She dropped her basket and fought to free herself from his iron grasp, feeling her stomach knot with revulsion. She looked around and saw very few people interested in what was happening and she felt a tightening in her chest as the man began to rake up the skirt of her habit.
Holy shit, this ape was going to rape her in the middle of the effing marketplace! She fought his hands with hers for the briefest of moments to keep her skirt down when it occurred to her that if he turned her over or got her on the ground, she was done. When that thought hit her, she willed herself to do the opposite of what her instinct told her to do. She pulled him towards her so that they were face to face and she could see the surprise in his eyes. He was not a revoltingly homely man—even if the smell coming off him was making her eyes water—but the look in his eye was as sadistic and base as she had ever seen. Keeping eye contact with him, she screamed in his face and brought her knee up sharply into his groin. In a second, she felt him release her and she stumbled away from his falling body, her own heavy skirts trapping her. She scrambled to her feet and looked over his shoulder to see if he had a friend who might avenge him. What she saw made the sweat that was creeping down the small of her back turn to ice.
Axel.
Chapter Ten
He stood holding a white horse by the halter and laughing at what must have looked like street performance to him. He was dressed in velvet breeches and soft suede knee-high boots. His jacket was embroidered in rich colors of burgundy and gold. Unlike this brother, his hair was long and dark. He was handsome but Ella could see the coldness in his eyes even from a distance. She was wearing the habit of a novice from the convent. He could see immediately what she was.
He watched her over the writhing man on the ground and smiled. Ella stood up straight, her heart pounding, her stomach ready to empty on the ground before her. She placed her hands on her hips and stared him down. She lifted her chin.
Motherfucker, she thought as she stood and watched him, her knees trembling, her breath coming in ragged snatches. Preying on the weak. Torturing women, torturing Greta. The more she looked at him, the angrier she felt herself becoming. And she did not move. A man came up behind Axel and spoke in his ear and Axel nodded and waved him away as if he were an annoying fly. His eyes raked Ella from top to bottom, clearly mentally undressing her. Then, without breaking eye contact with her, he reached down with his hand and grabbed the protruding codpiece he wore between his legs and squeezed it. With the same hand, he pointed at Ella.
“I will see you soon, little sister,” he said. He gave the gurgling man on the cobblestones a mean laugh, mounted his horse and knocked over a large display of apples and freshly baked tarts as he rode away.
Ella watched him go and felt her hands go clammy and cold. Movement out of the corner of her eye quickly confirmed to her that the man on the ground was regaining control. She turned and ran.
Rowan looked at the GPS on his cellphone and then at the number on the building. This was it. This was where she lived. He scratched his chin and looked down the long street. Kleinschmidtstrasse. Yeah, that’s a mouthful. He’d never sent Ella an actual letter so her address hadn’t really played a part in his need-to-know reservoir. He looked up at the stacks of ancient windows facing the street and wondered which one was her apartment. She had talked about a bookstore outside her balcony. He turned the corner and saw the store in front of him. When he looked up at the building across the street from it, he saw her balcony and his heart seemed to pound harder.
He had no expectation that he would find her there but he could always hope. She didn’t answer her landline or her cellphone. Her office said they had heard nothing from her since the day she quit, now almost three weeks ago. Her father, whom he had called from the Atlanta airport on his way to Frankfurt, had officially become a certified basket case of nerves and anxiety.
Rowan entered the building. The stairs were wide but steep and smooth, worn slick from centuries of feet pounding up and down them. Not trusting the rickety and ancient elevator, Rowan bounded up the steps to the third floor. He had stopped by the rental management office on his way in from the train station, paid a month’s rent and picked up another set of keys.
Just that easy.
He found her apartment and unlocked the door. It was a little musty and if he had to bet, he’d say that no one had been in it for these three weeks. He dropped his travel bag on the floor and stood in the foyer of the tiny apartment. The kitchen opened to the living room and faced the front door. The first thing he saw was the framed photo of the two of them taken their last night together.
Shit, Ella, he thought. Looking at the picture, seeing how happy she looked that night, and how beautiful she was.
Where are you?
After a quick shower and a plate of wienerschnitzel in the restaurant downstairs, Rowan used his GPS to walk the route to Ella’s office. The light was dying but he looked carefully down every alleyway and every side street, trying to imagine how she might have left her apartment and not arrived at her destination. When he got to her office building, the employees long since gone, he checked his watch. Ella was a fast walker and easily kept up with him and his much longer legs. She would have made it here in twenty minutes. Satisfied, he walked back to her apartment as the lights of the clubs and restaurants came along the way.
He checked the answering machine in
her apartment to make sure no one had called while he was out. Then he went to bed.
The next morning, he was standing in the lobby of her office by eight o’clock. A luscious German babe sat at the front desk typing texts into her cellphone. She looked up and smiled flirtatiously with him.
That would have to be the lovely Heidi, Rowan thought. He touched the brim of his cowboy hat and she giggled.
“Fraulein,” he said.
“I’m sorry. Who are you waiting for?” she asked.
“Probably you,” he said. “If you’re Heidi.”
“I am she,” Heidi said, pinching her brows together but still smiling at him. Before he could present identification, she shrieked and clapped a hand to her mouth.
“I guess the penny dropped,” he said.
“You are Ella’s cowboy,” she said when she removed her hand. “Where is she?” She stood and looked behind him as if he might be hiding her. “Ella?”
“I don’t have her, ma’am,” Rowan said. “I was hoping you might.”
Heidi sat down hard. “Where did she go?” she asked.
“When did you see her last?”
“I saw her the morning of the day she quit. She wouldn’t talk with me. I was very hurt. I am still very hurt.”
“You know why Ella might have handed in her resignation? She ever indicate to you she was thinking of doing that?”
Heidi looked momentarily panicked, as if she were about to lie but didn’t feel terribly confident in the outcome.
“Not really,” she said, now not looking at him.
“She never let on she was thinking of quitting and moving back to the States? That’s a pretty big decision and I thought you two were close.”
“We were close,” Heidi said. “Good morning, Hugo!” she said brightly to a tall blond man who entered the lobby. He stood with his coat over his arm and a briefcase in his free hand.
“Good morning, Heidi.” The man stared at Rowan as if waiting to be introduced.
“This is Ella’s American boyfriend,” Heidi said to Hugo. “He is here looking for Ella.”
A Trespass in Time Page 10