“Now.”
His beefy assistant raised the iron bar in his hands and brought it down. The sound of the breaking bone was quite audible all through the chamber.
“I’ll write it! I’ll write it!” Emma shouted, her voice so loud it almost drowned the old woman’s cry of pain.
Von Bimbach looked at the pastor. Meyfarth swallowed.
“The other leg,” the Freiherr commanded.
The torturer and his assistant had already moved to the opposite side of the apparatus. Again, the torturer shoved aside the skirt; again, the iron bar came down.
“I’ll write it,” said Meyfarth. His voice sounded like a croak. Emma could barely hear the words, beneath the screams.
Chapter 15:
“The ram has taken Halsgericht now”
Bamberg, early September, 1634
“This has to be,” Anita Masaniello said, “one of the slimiest letters I have ever read.”
“Ah,” Constantin Ableidinger answered, “it was written, of course, by Dr. Lenz. ‘Pestilenz.’ Who delivered it in person.”
“At least, apparently, Emma and Meyfarth are alive. And still in fairly good shape, if we can rely on their notes. But I simply cannot believe the sheer idiocy of this.”
“The Freiherr believes, of course, that the location of his Schloss, well within the borders of Bayreuth, immunizes him from all serious danger.”
Anita, since coming up to Bamberg the previous month to take charge of connecting the dots between the Thorntons, Meyfarth, the Neidecker woman who had been his landlady, the Freiherr, the printer’s widow who was the ewe-though not bearing any actual resemblance to the logo of Ewegenia-and who was still, following the city council elections, locked into a battle with the local guild on the topic of forced marriage of said daughter to a candidate of its choice, and anything else she could put through her analytical techniques, had gotten pretty good at parsing Ableidinger’s conversation.
“Believes?”
“Margrave Christian has accepted oaths of allegiance from many of the farmers and townsmen who were previously considered to be the subjects of the lesser nobility within his territories.”
“Nice way to put it.” She shifted uncomfortably. The theory had been that last month, already, she would be on her way back to Grantville to have the baby at Leahy Medical Center with an up-time doctor doing the honors for the Salatto blessed event. Then Ableidinger showed up in Wuerzburg. Plus a sudden SOS from the Fulda people that drew off a half dozen of the Wuerzburg staff.
She looked down at her stomach. If they didn’t make progress about getting Emma and Meyfarth back pretty soon, she was going to have the baby in the Bamberg headquarters of the Franconian administration. Probably behind her desk; then pick herself up like a pioneer woman and go back to negotiating. Von Bimbach was demanding that they barbecue the ram. Not just Brillo. He wanted to fill Franconia with roast mutton.
“So he wants to parley.”
“The Freiherr says that he is willing to return them unharmed. On reasonable terms. Reasonable from his perspective. And parley only under the conditions that he set.”
Anita picked up the letter again. By one corner, carefully, between thumb and forefinger. “Why me? Why not you, Vince?
The question was reasonable enough. Vince Marcantonio was the Franconian administration’s head in Bamberg. He should have been prestigious enough for any Freiherr to meet with.
Vince Marcantonio looked a little abashed. “Previous intemperate statements about what I would do to the certain parts of the man’s anatomy if I ever caught him, I’m afraid. Wade Jackson said worse. We were more than a little pissed that he plucked them out right from under our noses. And a reporter overheard us.”
“Curses. I suppose that Cliff Priest can’t possibly get back here, and then up to Bayreuth, by the deadline this guy has set?”
“Not a prayer.”
“Okay, go back to Lenz. Say that I’ll go up and talk to the Freiherr. Not in his Schloss. No way am I going inside the man’s walls, not if I could bring the whole USE army with me, which I can’t. Outside. In a field. With a big enough batch of troops along to make a difference. Tom O’Brien and his pick of the crop. As many as von Bimbach will let him bring.”
“And,” Constantin Ableidinger said, “stipulate that people have the right to come and watch. Ordinary people. Standing around the edges of the field. Witnesses to make sure that Fuchs von Bimbach attempts no treacherous undertaking. He can hardly object to that.”
Enclave within Bayreuth, September, 1634
The negotiations were going well, Freiherr von Bimbach thought. The fact that Salatto’s heavily pregnant wife had actually appeared reinforced his convictions about the importance of his hostages. Which meant that his strategy was going well. Once she acceded to the demands that Lenz was presenting, he would have humiliated the man, Salatto, doubly by doing it through the woman. Much more effective than dealing with the administrator directly.
Yes, he could afford to be quite intransigent. Require them to give him the ram and the ewe to get the hostages back; send out propaganda proclaiming that this showed how little the USE cared for the Franconians by comparison to his own people, while hanging the rebels. Demonstrate to the Swedes that only he was capable of bringing sanity back to the region.
Lenz thought that he was doing well on the Freiherr’s behalf. He had not conceded a single point. All they had to do now was wait for the up-timers to admit that he had won.
* * *
Breaking into the torture chamber proved to be as simple as opening the door and walking in. There had been no soldier standing guard, as Noelle had feared there might be. That wasn’t really surprising, though. Most if not all of the soldiers still in the Schloss were at the windows on the upper floors, watching the parlay taking place on the field beyond the castle.
She took three steps into the room, with Eddie following her.
“Where are they, do you think?” She looked around the large empty room. There was nothing here that even vaguely resembled “cells.” In fact, to her surprise, the chamber had very little resemblance to what she’d thought a “dungeon” would look like. It was more like a half-basement a man might devote to a workshop.
It was not gloomy at all. There was a bright sun outside, and plenty of light came through the windows near the ceiling.
Before Eddie could reply, Noelle got her answer. The door opposite the one she and Eddie had entered swung open. A middle-aged man came though, followed by a very big younger one.
“What are you doing here?” the man demanded. “Get out!”
Noelle pulled out her pistol. “I want the prisoners. Now.”
The man gaped at her, for a moment. Then shouted: “Seize her, Johannes!”
The big assistant came around and moved toward her. Noelle brought up the gun. Before she could aim it, Eddie grabbed her by the shoulders and swung her aside. Then, lunged at the assistant.
A moment later, the two men were grappling. Noelle stepped to the side. The older man-the castle’s executioner and torturer, she assumed-was just staring at her. He was not more than fifteen feet away.
Weeks of tightly-repressed fury boiled to the surface. She raised the gun, grabbed it with both hands as Dan Frost had taught her, and fired.
Four times. Ricochets zinged from the stone walls, causing her to duck frantically.
When she looked up, she saw the executioner running out the door he’d come in through.
She’d missed. All four shots!
A heavy weight hammered into her, knocking her down. On her knees, gasping from the shock, Noelle looked up and saw that she’d been accidentally slammed into by Eddie and his opponent, as they wrestled fiercely.
Eddie was losing the match. Pretty badly. He was a big enough young man, and stronger than he looked. But he was simply overmatched by his opponent.