Forest of Whispers Page 19

  “I hope you’ll find our home comfortable while you’re here.” The Electorate gestures to the chair that will be mine for the duration of our dinner.

  In one swift motion, he is behind me, adjusting my chair so I am now penned in at the enormous table. I can’t help feeling that familiar dread that I am to be interrogated. The chair I sit in is made from a heavy wood. It would take a few tries to push myself away from the table to free myself. With all my heart I want to believe that this is just a simple meeting—a dinner that we will share, not a trial conducted by a judge who will sit at the far end of the table, dissecting me until he reaches a verdict that I am guilty.

  My eyes follow him as he walks back to his own chair at the opposite end, while Laurentz takes a seat along the length between us. The look on Laurentz’s face tells me he notices I’m uncomfortable. He must have told his father who I am, but I wonder if he has told him the extent of it. Will he hand me over to the guards? The bishop? Will my stay here, as well as Laurentz’s kind intentions, be short-lived? Just before my mind can wander to darker places, I notice the Electorate staring at me from the opposite length of the great table, and my hands automatically grip the chair’s arms, ready to push myself away, preparing myself for whatever should come next.

  “My son has told me you’ve been wrongly accused. That with his help, you’ve managed to escape the Drudenhaus in Bamberg. I am sure I don’t have to tell you that alone puts an even greater price on your head.”

  I look from him to Laurentz, not knowing if I should answer. All the times I’ve been pressed to confess, I’ve chosen to stay quiet, admitting to nothing.

  “Everyone in the villages is being accused, Father…”

  The Electorate cuts him off by raising his hand in the air. “I’d like to hear her story, Laurentz, not your interpretation of it.” He looks at me again, attempting a smile that he must believe will calm my nerves and make me more willing to comply. “After all, if she’s to be under our protection and a guest in our home, I should know everything there is to know about her.”

  Laurentz sends a silent message my way with his eyes. This is the role I am supposed to play. The real one. Just like he told me to. Only, I am not comfortable with the legacy that has been handed to me, and I wonder if it’s safe to show that, or if playing along with the game my mother has initiated is a strong card I must hold onto in order to survive. I self-consciously pull at the handkerchief hidden inside the sleeve of my dress and think of how to answer.

  It seems the silence that has fallen over the room is a tangible thing. I am shaking, wondering what I should give away about myself. What is safe to reveal? Everything up until now has been a nightmare to me; my world has disappeared, and I have found myself in one hellish predicament after another. Could I have been brought into the beauty and apparent safety of this grand house under false pretenses?

  Finally, I opt for the truth.

  “I made a mistake,” I say, hoping my meek voice travels across the length of the table so that I don’t have to repeat myself. “I traded mushrooms for a linen handkerchief in the square. I had no idea the mushrooms were toxic, Sir.” I am startled at how good it feels to finally be able to speak my side. “But if you’re asking if I’m a witch, then I’m not quite sure what to tell you.”

  “Well, only tell the truth,” the Electorate prompts me. “Let’s start with the beginning, then, shall we? What do you know of your parentage?”

  “Nothing, really. My mother was…” I pause, trembling. Whatever I say now will forever give proof that I am what they fear me to be. I hold my chin high, and go on. “I never knew my mother. She sought the help of Matilde in the forest and gave me away.”

  The Electorate leans forward on his elbows as a strange desire to hear my story lights his eyes, and I know that there is no turning back now. I swallow hard, grip the arms of the chair, and say it.

  “She was burned at the stake in the square of Württemberg.”

  An odd exchange passes between the two men after I tell them of my mother’s death, as if they know something I do not. I wait without breathing for the next question to come. A movement to my right startles me, and I catch my gaunt reflection shining back at me in the silver dome the serving girl lifts from a platter, revealing a selection of meats lying in a savory sauce. The Electorate opens a folded cloth and settles it beneath the table, out of view. It is clear he won’t ask anything else until the girl has left us.

  As if there isn’t enough on the table already, the serving staff brings more dishes from the kitchen. Round and round like the ticking of a clock, they present a feast, then disappear in a swift orderly fashion. The last to leave is the gray-haired woman from the hall, her eyes settling on me sharply as if she is the only one here who has figured me out—that although I am clean, in a change of fine clothing, I can never cover up the witch inside.

  I see that Laurentz watches his father closely. He too is waiting for what will come next. Suddenly, the Electorate stands, pushing his chair out behind him, the dinner on his plate ignored.

  “Father?” Laurentz asks after him.

  My heart is hammering in my chest, and I know with every beat it signifies the end of the little comfort I’ve had since my escape from the prison. There is a feeling of crazed panic building inside me that screams louder than my worst nightmare, reaching an intense pitch as it builds and builds. Whatever Laurentz told his father about me has only given the Electorate proof that I am a dangerous creature. I thought telling him the truth would help me. I was wrong. He’s going to alert the bishop. I’m going to be taken back to the Drudenhaus and burned at the stake in the courtyard like I should have been.

  I will die, just like my mother.

  I shoot a desperate look toward Laurentz. Oh, why won’t he help me?

  The Electorate is out of his seat and walking toward me, and no matter how I push and push to move my chair away from the table, it will not budge; my hands are slick with sweat and slip from the polished wood beneath them. His hand is outstretched for mine. I have no choice. I will go quietly, and then he tells me, “Come, my dear. It’s time you met your mother.”

  Chapter 35

  Laurentz

  Night falls quickly when it has the help of a forest to eat the setting of the sun. Candles deliver an eerie light throughout the room, and Rune’s eyes are large and hollowed out by fright. She is no longer the girl who hides a dark secret, but is more like something of a nightmarish world—a story told by a fire, a fairy tale born from the Black Forest to explain the ghostly chill that claims those who venture in alone.

  “Father.” I rise to my feet. “What is going on?”

  In a flash I am at her side, helping her with her chair and taking her hand. That strange fleeting moment has vanished and now I see her as she really is. She is Rune. She is the beautiful girl I saved from the hedge, the tortured soul I saved from the stake, the one who has magickally cast a spell over my heart. I see in her pale face that she believes my father is about to send her to her death.

  “This way,” my father urges us, “There is something you will be interested in seeing.”

  I have no idea what has gotten into my father’s head, and I wonder if my bringing Rune to Eltz has backfired. Down the endless hall we follow him, passing through the gallery where faces from my family’s past look down at us. Vivid paintings of fox hunts and ladies having tea beneath willow trees—I’m sure Rune does not see the brush strokes and beauty, but instead, wonders if any of them knew her mother, if any of them helped bring her to her death. I wonder the same and am overcome with years of guilt, a weight given to me by my own family’s name.

  We follow my father to the library, a place I have not visited in years, and Rune stifles a gasp. Lying on the table is her bag of fortune stones, the cloth laid out next to it. Books are strewn about, showing that my father has been very busy, and I wonder what with.

  “I believe this belongs to you.” He picks up the cloth, fingering it
with care. “Can you tell me where and when you came to be its owner?”

  Her eyes will not leave the cloth, as if looking away will make it disappear again. “It was Matilde’s. As long as I can remember, the stones have always been wrapped in it,” she replies. “She read the stones the day my mother gave me away. That’s how she named me.”

  “And you were given to this Matilde?”

  Rune gives a slight nod, “Yes.”

  “Do you remember your mother?” he asks.

  “No,” Rune tells him. “I was just a baby.”

  “Wrapped in this?” he holds the cloth to the light.

  Rune is quiet, the look on her face is incredulous and lost at the same time. “What do you mean?”

  My father steps around the table and edges closer to where we stand, his face still tight. “This is what’s left of an infant’s cloth. A blanket. Swaddling. It’s very possible you may have been wrapped in it the day you were given to Matilde,” he tells her. “Any number of things could reveal who you are, Rune. But let me ask you this—why is it that you are accused of witchcraft? Is it because of Matilde? Was she the witch? Did she steal you long ago?”

  “No!” Rune’s face is suddenly white with fear. “Matilde wasn’t a witch, and she loved me. She raised me like her own.”

  “You were given to her by the witch who died later that day in the village square?” Moments of silence pass and my father presses further. “So you believe a woman who was burned at the stake sixteen years ago gave you away, for whatever reason, to hide you, to protect you. She was your mother?”

  “Yes,” she nods quickly. “Yes.”

  “What makes you believe she was your mother? Have you proof?” My father’s voice grows louder, filling the room.

  “Enough!” I shout. “Whatever is this for?”

  “To be sure, Laurentz! We must be sure.” My father sets his sights on me now, his intense expression showing me that finding out all we can is of utmost importance. He turns to Rune, who is on the verge of splitting into pieces from all the questions fired at her.

  “This is important, girl. How can you be so sure the witch was your mother?”

  Rune lets her body slide weakly to the cushioned chair that sits next to the desk, her face cradled in her hands as she weeps.

  “Because she speaks to me,” she whispers, and both my father and I lean closer, straining our ears to be sure of what she’s admitted.

  Even I look at her with disbelief. “She speaks to you?”

  Rune nods and looks up at me with tearstained cheeks. “She whispers. Tells me things.”

  My father kneels closer to her. “What does she tell you?”

  “Horrible things. That the village must pay for what they’ve done. That I must bide my time.”

  Rune’s hands shake uncontrollably with fear. I’m certain she believes what she’s told us will seal her fate. My father nods, as if he understands fully what Rune is telling us, and he gently places his hand upon her shoulder.

  “Did your mother ever tell you her name?” he asks.

  “Not directly,” Rune tells him through gentle sobs. “I heard her name inside my head… It was Liese.”

  Nothing prepares me for the look upon my father’s face. Each line held tautly across his forehead has smoothed; his cinched brows rise high with curiosity. He even lets out an audible breath he must have been holding in for a very long time.

  “These are yours.” He pushes the bag of stones closer to her. “And so is this.” Rune and I watch quietly as he opens one of the books on the table, and slides it over to the light. It is a map of the southern tip of Germany outlining the noble holdings that lie at the edge of the Black Forest. An area is circled in black, and in the center of the land is a circled star.

  The castle of Pyrmont.

  Chapter 36

  Rune

  Pyrmont.

  I should know that word, but I don’t. I am almost afraid to ask. There’s a heavy stirring inside me. My mother is near, and something snaps into place. Her whisper, hidden and lodged inside me, becomes a breath, a deep exhale that leaps from its resting place. It doesn’t lash out. It doesn’t will me to do anything unspeakable. It too is silent, watching and waiting. Calm.

  His hand turns the page where a colorful family crest has been painted across the creamy parchment, and he lays the rune cloth next to it. “The coat of arms was reinvented some time ago to be different from the original,” the Electorate tells me. “As you can see here, the stitches are almost the same.”

  “Why?” I ask softly. “Why was it changed?”

  “My guess is to protect you.” When he looks at me, he doesn’t seem so frightening any more. He points to the map. “This is your family’s home.”

  “I have a family?”

  The two men exchange solemn looks, and then the Electorate shakes his head. “Plague has dealt a swift and deadly hand. Unless there are others, you are the only surviving heir to Pyrmont.”

  “Is that why I would need protection? Because I’m the only one?” I wonder out loud. “But I wasn’t always the only one. What makes me so special?”

  “It seems great pains were taken to protect your identity,” Laurentz tells me, looking into my eyes. We watch as his father opens a small box on the table, producing a metal skeleton key. He slips the key into one of the many little drawers along the top of the desk.

  “I suppose she is the reason you were hidden away.”

  Before I know it he is sliding a small oval frame across the table to me, and my hand lifts to my mouth. It is a miniature painting of the girl in the looking glass from the bath—the girl trapped in the silver dome from the dining room. I want to say it is me, but I know it isn’t. It’s her, enclosed in glass.

  “She was beautiful, wasn’t she? They say the glass prevents her soul from rejoining the living,” the Electorate says. “And if she was as powerful as they say she was, then her daughter would perhaps hold an even stronger power, one that would warrant hiding her away.”

  I almost laugh at the superstition, but that is the rational side Matilde instilled in me. I was hidden away…and I know how very alive my mother is inside me. Is this the power they speak of? That she would live through me, even after her death, to wield a terrible power against those who crossed her? How silly to think that a thin sliver of glass could be enough to prevent her wrath. But it’s hard to look away from the vibrant face beneath it. There is something about her that calls, beckons, and keeps me. Though it is like looking into a mirror, I am sure I don’t have the same effect on others—on Laurentz. I’ve seen my reflection. It makes me shudder.

  “You knew her? You never told me.” Laurentz shifts his gaze from the painting to me, and I know he’s marking the similarities in his mind.

  “She was a friend of your mother’s,” he nods toward Laurentz. “Her name was Liese.”

  As soon as he says her name a prickly feeling crawls up my back. In an instant I’m back in the bishop’s courthouse, a strange voice speaking through me. Even after all the times my mother has whispered to me, that one moment when she spoke through me has felt like a dream. Now I know I hadn’t imagined it.

  His voice is reflective and gravely as he continues, “No one knew she was expecting a child.”

  “Do you know who my father is, then?”

  The Electorate looks at me. He is composed, yet there is a strange sense of confusion that I feel from him. “Your mother was the Lady of Pyrmont.”

  “That would make her the rightful heir,” Laurentz interrupts.

  “Yes, but why place you in hiding? Why deny you your heritage, your parents? The Electorate and his wife had no other children.”

  “Or simply because your mother practiced that which he didn’t approve of,” Laurentz says reflectively, but he suddenly peers at me from the corner of his eye. I’m not offended, though. I know what I am.

  Laurentz leans across the desk for another look inside the frame.

  �
�Perhaps my father was ashamed,” I say beneath my breath. “Perhaps he would have never wanted me, anyway.”

  All I’ve known about my mother has been in secret. Little stories told to me, whispers here and there. In this tiny frame, though, she appears spirited and captivating, her skin glowing with a faint blush, hair dark and cascading with waves and curls collecting about her shoulders. Her eyes shine with a light that belongs to someone other than the voice I hear in my head.

  I slide the portrait back across the table. The menacing voice I so often hear couldn’t possibly belong to the beautiful woman in the frame. That woman is much too kind-looking—full of life, not vengeance. I remember the harshness to her words inside my head—her pleas, her urgency. I am not sure why she hid me long ago in the forest. I’d like to think she kept me a secret so that I might live, even if it was to do her bidding, and I briefly wonder if those remaining in the village since the day she burned are the only ones who fear her wrath. I wonder if perhaps there is someone else. And then I realize the importance of the glass. My heart begins to beat faster. To anyone who fears her, she is still alive.

  And I do. I fear her with all my heart.

  Chapter 37

  Laurentz

  My father steps outside into the hall and closes the doors behind him, leaving Rune and me alone in the library. I imagine he is eager to be away from what has just been said. The past often feels like a heavy lingering cloud that will suffocate us if we stand beneath it for too long, bringing back memories that a man like my father would sooner forget.

  “I don’t understand,” Rune says. “Why would she give me away? Why would I spend sixteen years living in a forest everyone fears, when I could have had grown up knowing I had a place to belong to?”

  She doesn’t wait for my response, but keeps thinking out loud. “I never would have known what it feels like to be hungry. I never would have had to hide my face away from the others in the village, enduring their whispers, the way they pointed their fingers. I never,” she pauses, swallowing the deep sob collecting in her throat. “I never would have had to lose Matilde.”