* * *
“Frau Thornton.”
Emma looked up. The woman standing at the other side of the booth counter looked very upset.
“Please, excuse me many times. I am the landlady for Herr Pastor Meyfarth. I know that your husband is his friend. This is true, isn’t it?”
“Why, yes. Willard is out of town this week, though. Can I help you?”
“Men came for the Herr Pastor, yesterday. To bring comfort to a difficult birth, they said. They did not give their names. He went with them, naturally. But he has not returned.”
“Couldn’t members of his church help you more than I can?”
The woman looked even more distressed. “I have already been to them. They know of no one who would have had need of him, no one expecting a child. We have checked with the two families they know of who expect God to bless them soon with the gift of a child. Both mothers are well; neither sent for the pastor. No one knows.”
“Why come to me?”
“It is said that you know the ram.”
Emma smiled. So much for discretion. Gathering up the literature she had on display, she packed it into the tightly woven basket at the rear of the booth; then picked up the basket and put it on top of the three-legged stool on which she sat when no inquirer was there. Just in case of rain; it should stay dry until she got back.
Drat, she had missed a couple. Rather than open the balky catch on the basket again, she dropped them into the big pocket on her work apron. It was a Grantville Home Center special; the pockets were big, and the motto was an attention-getter when she worked the booth.
“Come with me, please.”
* * *
Constantin Ableidinger sighed. He had had men from the ram watching them for so long. There had been, as far as they could tell, no attempts against them. With everything else that was going on, he needed every reliable, trained man he had at his side. He called the Jaeger back, to be in other places, to do other things.
Now, both Herr Meyfarth and Frau Thornton, gone. And a note on his desk.
Call off the ram, or they die.
As if he could call off the ram, now! What kind of fools could these men be, to think that anyone, even the ram himself, with a word or gesture, could call back a flood? Find the men who were in Bamberg last spring. Where would they be, now? Thousands in the field. Start asking. Where were they, the Jaeger who had guarded them?
Herr Thornton. He was out of the city. Where was he? Did Ottheinrich leave a list, of the villages they were to visit? Was he safe? The itinerary was here; quickly, he sent out a runner to follow the route.
What tie could there be between Meyfarth and the Thorntons, other than the ram?
* * *
“You are sure that you saw this?” Martha Kronacher asked anxiously. “Sure?”
The ewe’s little flock of apprentices, Martha’s younger brothers and their friends, had been talking to people all over Bamberg for two days.
Her brother Melchior had been pushing them hard. He did not like the look that had come over Martha’s face when she heard that Pastor Meyfarth was gone. She was sincerely concerned about Frau Thornton, to be sure, but with Pastor Meyfarth, she appeared to take it personally, so to speak.
“Yes, I am sure,” the fishmonger said, in response to a question asked by Stew Hawker. “In the market, speaking to Frau Thornton. At the booth where she has the books and pamphlets. It was Herr Pastor Meyfarth’s landlady. I am sure that I recognized her. I don’t know her name, but she’s a widow who keeps a small boarding house, for working men. Has for several years. Respectable, very respectable. The rooms are cheap.”
“Has anyone checked there?” Ableidinger asked.
“The other boarders are coming and going,” the Jaeger in the room answered. He was the biggest of the ones whom Ableidinger had brought with him into Bamberg. The scariest one, too, Martha thought. “Complaining that this morning there was no breakfast. The woman is gone.”
“Is she a Lutheran that he was boarding with her?” Wade Jackson took up where Stew had left off.
Martha frowned suddenly. She did not recall having seen die alte Neideckerin at any of the pastor’s sermons.
Her mother came into the room.
“Neighbors say that the family was Protestant, Constantin,” the Jaeger continued. “Before, you know. Before 1628. She welcomed the Herr Pastor when he let people know that he was coming.”
“Family?”
“None,” the fishmonger answered. “None that anyone knows of. Not any more. There was a husband, but he died. A daughter. I don’t know what became of her.”
Else Kronacher spoke up. “I do.” She turned to Ableidinger. “Constantin, I recommended the boarding house because Rudolph Vulpius and old Kaethe thought that Pastor Meyfarth would be safe there. As safe as anywhere. Die alte Neideckerin is a relative of Frau Anna Hansen, who was burned as a witch in 1629. Or, possibly, her husband was the relative. In any case, they came under suspicion. They sent Judith, the daughter, away, to safety.”
“Where?”
“She was not a native of Bamberg, you know. The old woman. She married into the city. Vulpius took Judith to the lands of the Freiherr Fuchs von Bimbach, over by Bayreuth.”
“Hell and damnation!” Wade Jackson exploded out of his chair. “We’ve got to call Vince. Notify Steve and Scott. Right away.”
He looked for the big Jaeger. The man had already left the room.
* * *
“You’re certain?” Noelle asked.
The cook nodded. “Yes. I recognized die alte Neideckerin and Pastor Meyfarth. The other woman with them, I don’t know. But the blacksmith’s son says she’s one of the up-timer heretics. The wife of the one who was flogged in Bamberg, before the ram put a stop to it.”
Her hands folded on her lap, Noelle stared at the wall in her tiny living quarters. As if, somehow, the blankness of the wall could dispel the blankness in her mind.
“What in the name of… What is von Bimbach doing? That’s insane!”
“He’s a madman,” the cook said, shrugging. “He always has been, even when he was a boy. When he loses his temper, he’s capable of anything. Even at the age of six, he was that way. I remember him.”
She might, at that, Noelle thought. The cook had to be close to sixty years old, and she’d worked in the von Bimbach Schloss most of her adult life.
“Still…”
She shook off the disbelief. Lunatic act or not, Fuchs von Bimbach’s kidnapping of the three people from Bamberg might finally provide the handle to topple him. The fulcrum, rather, for the lever she already had more or less in her hands. By now, well over half of the castle’s staff was either working for the ram or sympathetic.
Even the soldiers didn’t seem attached to their lord. And they were obviously very nervous about the situation. Everyone, by now, knew what had happened at Mitwitz. The only ones of that Freiherr’s mercenaries who had survived has been the ones who ran away, and did it quickly.
She rose to her feet, abruptly, filled with determination.