Heidelberg Effect (23 page)

Ella reached out and took Greta’s hand and
squeezed it.

“You were an answer to prayer, yourself,”
Ella said. “The convent couldn’t have done any better than to have
you take over.”

“I hope so.” Greta smiled. “I pray so.”

The two left the convent and walked down the
lane to the pub. Ella knew Rowan could see them from the other side
of the stonewall in the garden, but she dared not look at him in
case someone was watching. The game was on and she needed to play
her part perfectly.

She succeeded in staying mute during the
interview at the pub and tried to look as confused as possible,
which was not difficult, given the circumstances. When the castle
contact finished speaking with Greta, he grabbed Ella roughly by
the collar and led her away. Ella did not look back as she was
hauled off but she found herself having serious second thoughts
about this part of the plan.

Rowan worked in the garden
for most of the morning. He cursed himself for allowing Ella to
talk him into this crazy idea. She was so caught up in saving the
convent and maybe wanting to be a spy like her mother that she had
lost all common sense. He looked around the garden and leaned on
the hoe. He had long since stopped asking himself how this had
happened. He knew he was the kind of guy who didn’t care
how
things worked, just
that they did.

The situation he had to accept right now was
that he had let Ella dress up like a boy so that she could get
inside a seventeenth century castle and spy on people who were able
to kill and torture without concern for right or wrong. It was
worse than dealing with the mob. At least the mob had some respect
for the feds and needed to work around them.

He stared up at the castle.
From here, he could just see the faint outline of its upper most
walls. Was she in? Were they buying it? Would he ever
fucking
see
her
again?

Several hours later, just when he didn’t
think he could take another minute of not knowing what was going
on, one of the novices came to the garden and waved to him to come
into the convent. Hoping that meant Ella was back, Rowan dropped
his hoe and came at a run.

She sat in the kitchen on a stool, talking
with Greta. Her back was turned to him.

“Hey, beautiful,” he said as he entered the
room.

“Well, not so much,” she said as she turned
to face him. He could see she had a fat lip and a bloody nose.

“Son of a
bitch
!” Rowan
said.

“I think I suitably impressed them with my
credentials,” she lisped through her swollen lip.

“The head groomsman did this to you?”

“It appears to be part of the hiring
process,” Ella said. She winced as Rowan touched her battered
face.

“It is a rough world in 1620,” Greta
said.

“No shit,” Rowan said. “Imagine if they’d
decided you weren’t right for the job.”

Hans Krüger sat at his desk and stared at
the fat oaf who stood before him. Mayer had ushered him in only
minutes before. Usually Mayer left the room in order that his lord
could deal with any miscreants as he saw fit without concern that
Mayer could testify that a crime had been committed. But today,
Krüger suspected Mayer had left to escape the man’s foul stench.
Besides, if Krüger wanted to murder this disgusting excuse of
skin-stretched blubber, he could do it in the town square with his
bare hands for no reason at all and there would be no consequences.
He began to wonder about Mayer’s ability to handle his
position.

The fat slob had been instructed not to
speak until his lord addressed him. Krüger used this as an
opportunity to determine if the lout was a veteran liar—something
which he, Krüger was able to determine by mere observation—and,
ultimately, if he could be useful in future or would lose his
worthless life before lunch. The man stood, his double chin
vibrating as if he were hopping in place. It was Krüger’s
experience that overt displays of nervousness usually meant there
was truth to be found in a man’s words. Liars were smooth. Liars
did not sweat. The process of misleading was a practiced art that
only the devious and nimble of mind accomplished with ease. This
man, his fear redolent and rolling off him in waves, may not be an
honest man in his other dealings, but Krüger believed he would tell
the truth about why he had been brought to the castle today.

“Speak,” Krüger said. “You saw something
strange by the convent today I am told?”

“Yes, milord,” the toad squeaked.

“What was it that you saw, my good man?”

“The new gardener at the convent, milord,”
the man said, licking his lips as he spoke. “He speaks a language
no one has ever heard before.”

“So he is a foreigner. What is strange about
that?”

The man clasped his hands to his fat chin as
if afraid he was not giving the right answers to some predetermined
examination. Krüger had half a mind to execute Mayer for bringing
him this useless parasite.

“They say he is a simpleton,” the man said,
huge rivulets of sweat creasing down his fat face. “But he sleeps
and takes his meals inside the convent.”

Krüger abruptly checked his sneering
response to the man.

“He sleeps
inside
the convent, you
say?”

“Yes.”

“You have seen this or just heard?”

“Both, milord,” the man said.

Krüger looked out the window in the
direction of the convent.

“That is indeed odd,” he said.

Rowan stood next to their bed where he had
spread out the items they would need for their plan to work. He
stood looking down at the straw-stuffed woolen comforter upon which
he had laid Ella’s cell phone, his lighter, the block of C-4 and
the tangle of blasting caps.

“If you’re caught with any
of this stuff, they’ll arrest you as a witch,” he said. “But
especially
your
phone.”

“I know.”

“I hate you doing this.”

Ella sat on the edge of the bed. She held
his hand to her cheek and looked into his eyes. “I know,” she
said.

“You don’t have to plant the lighter in
Axel’s bedroom. It’s too dangerous.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Jesus.”

“If you can start exploding things at
exactly noon, Rowan, I’ll be ready to go. I’ll be moving in the
opposite direction of everyone else. In the panic, no one will see
me.” She stood up and pulled off her stable boy clothes which she
kicked into a pile in the corner of the room.

“Do you really know how to make a bomb?” he
asked as he watched her.

Ella shook her head and pulled a nightgown
over her head.

“Then how did you—”

“Look, Rowan, I went out with a guy from
work, okay? And he thought it’d impress me that he was qualified to
handle C4. So he brought some over.”

“Sounds like a moron. He was in your
apartment?”

“Rowan, nothing happened. I was just feeling
lonely one night.”

“None of my business.”

“We don’t have time to get into this. Just
tell me where and when so I can use every minute of the window you
give me.”

“It wasn’t that idiot, Hugo, was it?”

Ella looked at him in horror. “How do you
know Hugo?”

“I told you, I talked to some people at your
office when I was trying to find you.”

“And you talked to Hugo?”

“In a manner of speaking.” He stared at the
block of C4.

“Just jam the blasting cap into it,” Ella
said. “And then mold it or stuff it into something.” She held up a
handful of the blasting caps with their fuses dangling. “And make
sure you’ve got the book matches handy.”

Rowan said nothing.

“You’re pouting.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If you say nothing
happened, I believe you. Besides, we didn’t have an understanding
or anything. You were free to do as you like.”

“Exactly. It was
precisely
because
I was free to do as I like,” Ella said, “that I was able to
realize that I didn’t want to be with anyone but you.
Satisfied?”

He did not respond but she could tell he was
pleased.

“And yourself?” she said. “Were you a little
angel when all communications ceased?”

“I was, actually,” Rowan said. “I came close
one time but, in the end, my heart wasn’t in it.”

Ella sat down next to him.
“If I’ve learned anything from all this,” she said, “I’ve learned
that
that
is what
it all comes down to.”

Rowan looked at her. A smile edged at his
lips.

“Not only does your heart know,” she
continued, “but sometimes it knows before you do.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said, leaning over
to kiss her. “I always knew.”

That night, Rowan was particularly gentle
with Ella to the point where she complained.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he insisted.

“I want to feel like I’m being kissed,
Rowan,” she said. “Even if it hurts.”

“I hate you having to go back there
tomorrow.”

“I know. And I hate the idea of you setting
off a damn bomb.”

“These monks that Greta is having write the
anonymous letter to the Protestant Magistrate…she trusts them?”

“Jeez, Rowan,
they’re
monks
.”

“What, you never heard of double-dealing,
low-down monks before? Won’t they wonder why she’s asking them to
set up Axel?”

“She has a relationship with them. Besides,
they hate Axel. He destroyed their monastery.”

They were quiet for a moment, both lost in
their own thoughts.

Ella laughed. “Can you even believe we’re
doing any of this?”

He kissed her tenderly. “I can hardly
believe we’re together,” he said.

“I never should have taken the job in
Germany.”

“Guess you felt like you had to.”

“It was so stupid. What I can’t believe is I
got a second chance with you.”

“Are you kidding?” He pulled her close to
him and tucked her against his chest. “There was no way I was
letting you go.”

Before they drifted off to sleep, Rowan
murmured to her, his eyes closed: “What did you tell Greta to put
in the letter?”

“The usual,” Ella yawned. “That he drinks
human blood and can make fire come out his fingers.”

“That’s good. G’nite, beautiful.”

Ella was up early the next
morning. She was too nervous to eat much breakfast but stuffed a
heel of bread in the baggy pocket of her raggedy pants. It was
still dark out when she stole out of the convent and walked down
the lane leading to the
Altstadt
on the way to the castle. She and Rowan had said
their goodbyes from the confines of their narrow bed. But because
Rowan was clearly building up a head of steam fretting, she left
while he was in the garden relieving himself. She knew he’d be
furious, but there didn’t seem to be any point in delaying and all
his worry and urgings and
be safes
were just making her more nervous. They’d gone
over it a hundred times. There was nothing else to gain by drawing
out the departure.

Greta was up and Ella gave her a quick wave
before shutting the door to the kitchen. Greta’s job today was less
dangerous but no less important. She had to set the monks to
recreating Axel’s birth certificate.

Rowan’s job was to avoid attention while
setting the explosive charge under the drawbridge of the castle.
The explosion needed to be big enough to cause chaos within the
castle, but not so big that Rowan himself was captured or, God
forbid, blown up in the process.

As she walked, Ella put thoughts of Rowan
and Greta aside. There was no point in worrying about their days.
She had all she could handle with her own monumental task. Even
with the evidence written in bruises on her face, Ella hadn’t told
Rowan and Greta the whole truth about yesterday in the castle. She
had been beaten almost as soon as she set foot in the stable. The
other stable boys regarded her as an interloper. And because she
was mute, they saw her as a natural victim.

God, this place is fucked
up,
Ella found herself thinking. After
nodding at the guards standing at the base of the castle gate, she
trotted to the darkened stable yard in the forecourt of the castle.
She snuck into the first stall. The boys were sleeping on the floor
like a litter of puppies. The straw was filthy and so were they.
Ella held her nose and stepped quietly around them.

When she reached the other side of the
stall, she sat down to wait for them to wake up. As soon as she
heard the stable master moving about the stable, she stood up and
kicked one of the nearest boys.

She hoped Rowan would be able to set the
charge early according to plan. She was aching to get into the
castle. She felt for the cellphone in her inside trouser
pocket.

“What’re you lookin’ at, pisser?” One of the
boys snarled at her and she fought to keep her face impassive as
visions of five minutes with him and her Taser passed through her
mind.

The stable master appeared in the doorway.
He was large and ruddy with short legs, a barrel chest and a bull
neck. He had a cruel look in his eye and a scar that ran the length
of his face from his eyebrow to his jawline. From the way he
treated the boys, Ella was pretty sure he was a card-carrying
pederast. She could not imagine how he ended up working with horses
unless torturing smaller animals had become boring for him. He
caught her eye and smiled his toothless, wicked smile like he
wanted to eat her for breakfast.

Come on, Rowan, blow something up any time
now…