As he stood looking in at the blacksmith’s open work area, he glanced at the gatehouse and noticed the same three guards he’d seen talking in the corridor now walking toward the gatehouse. Only one of Duke Wilhelm’s guards was inside, and he stepped outside to greet them. The three of Claybrook’s men moved toward him in a rush, then pushed him inside.
Gerek started forward, reaching for his sword at his hip, but then remembered he’d left it in the barracks. He glanced around, but no one else noticed what they’d done.
He watched two of the men drag the guard’s limp body to a nearby shed. They soon emerged and walked back to the gatehouse to join the one who had stayed, as if he belonged there.
With a sick feeling, he realized Lord Claybrook and his men were starting to take over Hagenheim.
None of Duke Wilhelm’s guards were in sight. He needed armed men loyal to Duke Wilhelm. He needed to warn all of the guards and knights at the castle, and someone needed to inform Duke Wilhelm.
He worked his way to the other side of the shed, where Claybrook’s guards couldn’t see him, and slipped inside.
An open window let in enough light for Gerek to see the poor man slumped on the floor, his head and shoulders propped against the wall. He placed his fingers on the side of the man’s neck, feeling for the sign of a beating heart. He felt the blood flowing. A bleeding bump on his head seemed to be his only injury.
Gerek hurried out of the shed and back toward Hagenheim Castle. He went around to the barracks to retrieve his sword. No one was there, so he went inside. Many of the knights and guards had gone with Duke Wilhelm, including Valten. Were there enough men loyal to the duke to fight off the foreign guards?
He strode into the corridor and, upon approaching the Great Hall, he heard Claybrook’s voice. He stepped cautiously forward until he saw one of Claybrook’s men guarding the door.
Gerek went back toward the kitchen, but everywhere he looked, he saw only Claybrook’s guards. Duke Wilhelm’s guards were nowhere in sight.
He entered the kitchen. The only people inside were the servants. Rapunzel, along with the others, was chopping vegetables. He went toward her and bent to speak near her ear.
“Have you seen any of Duke Wilhelm’s guards this morning?”
“No.” She stared hard at him. “What is wrong?”
The other servants were talking as they worked and were far enough away not to hear if he spoke softly. “I think Lord Claybrook is trying to take over Hagenheim Castle. You should leave while you’re still able to get away.”
“What makes you think that?” Rapunzel’s blue eyes grew rounder.
“I saw them knock the guard at the gatehouse unconscious and hide his body in the shed. They’re probably taking them out one by one to give themselves a greater advantage.”
Rapunzel set her jaw and narrowed her eyes. “We must warn Lady Rose.”
“You warn Lady Rose. I’ll try to warn the duke’s other guards, then I’ll come back for you.”
“Shouldn’t you go find Duke Wilhelm and bring him back here?”
“It will take two days or more to get to him, but yes, I will. But I had to warn you. I want you to be safe.” His heart squeezed at the truth of his admission.
“I can take care of myself, but I’m not leaving here without Lady Rose and her family. They mean a lot to me, more than I can explain at the moment.” She paused. “I’ll stay here and do what I can to protect them, or help them escape.”
Was there ever a more courageous maiden? He wanted to at least squeeze her hand, but the other servants were starting to send furtive looks their way.
“Go on. We’ll defend ourselves very well.”
There was nothing else to do but nod and leave.
Rapunzel ignored the questions of her fellow maidservants and hurried out of the Great Hall. But before she could get more than two steps into the corridor, she heard Lady Rose’s strident voice. “This is outrageous. You may tell Lord Claybrook that I am angry and disappointed that he would dare to stop me from going on a picnic with my family.”
Rapunzel placed her hand over her knife, which was tucked in her pocket, as she crept forward. Four of Lord Claybrook’s guards were leading Lady Rose and her children up the stairs toward the solar.
Rapunzel turned around—and came face-to-face with Gothel.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mother had the same dark look on her face that she’d had the night before Rapunzel left home.
“So you left your mother to become a maidservant.” Her face twisted as she said the word maidservant. “Did you think Sir Gerek would love you more than I did? He will never marry you.”
She stepped toward Rapunzel, and Rapunzel took a step back. They were in the castle corridor, halfway between the Great Hall and the door that led outside to the kitchen. No one was around.
“You threatened me,” Rapunzel said, her voice strangely calm in spite of the way she was feeling. “I was afraid of you, after the things you said and the way—”
“You broke your mother’s heart. I didn’t know where you were. After all that I have done for you, you rejected me. What a daughter you have turned out to be.” Her jaw was set, her eyes black and cold as stone.
“Have you come to give me your potion and drag me away? Why are you here, Mother?” She cringed at calling her that.
“I am here . . .” She smiled. It sent a shiver across Rapunzel’s shoulders. “I am here because I am helping Lord Claybrook in his take-over of Hagenheim.” She crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “Duke Wilhelm will finally get his comeuppance, and I will be a part of it.”
“Why would you do that? Did you know all along that they were going to take over the castle?” She kept her voice low and glanced around to make sure Claybrook’s guards weren’t close enough to hear.
“Sir Reginald told me.” The look on her face was like that of a child who had just accomplished an impossible task. “When he left me, he became the captain of Lord Claybrook’s guard. He still loves me and always hoped to come back and marry me. At first I didn’t believe him, but after all these years, he wants to marry me after he and Lord Claybrook seize Hagenheim.”
Rapunzel stared at her. After all the things she had said about trusting men who said they loved her . . . “How could you?”
Mother suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled her into the nearest open door—the linen storage room. “Sir Reginald was a knight in the service of the Earl of Keiterhafen. He left with Lord Claybrook and promised to return for me someday, and now he has. He and Lord Claybrook will defeat Duke Wilhelm, and the Gerstenberg family will finally fall. The Earl of Keiterhafen is just arriving with the rest of his guards and knights. And if you try to help Duke Wilhelm’s family, you will not be spared.”
Rapunzel stared at the woman before her. “But why? Why do you hate Duke Wilhelm and his family?”
Gothel exhaled a long breath, her lips twisting, her eyes dark. “Because I was the illegitimate child of Duke Wilhelm’s father.”
“What?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Gothel sneered. “Duke Nicholas was my father, and Duke Wilhelm is my half brother.”
Rapunzel’s mind reeled. “If Duke Nicholas was your father . . .”
“My mother was his lover. But when she got pregnant with me, he cast her off. She is the one who first taught me to distrust any man who said he loved me.
“Duke Wilhelm does not want to believe his father had a baby with my mother, but his mother knew it was true. Everyone knew. But it’s just like Duke Wilhelm to believe that his father could not have done such a thing.” She wiped her mouth with a hard swipe of the back of her hand. “My mother gave me to my grandmother to raise, and she never let me forget that no one wanted us in Hagenheim. But I got them back. I hurt them just like they hurt me.”
“Yes, you hurt the Gerstenberg family. Duke Wilhelm and Lady Rose. My parents. Isn’t that right, Mother?”
Gothel’s face went slack, but she said
nothing.
She shoved all that Mother had just told her to the back of her mind so she could ask the question that had been burning inside her. “Tell me the truth about where I came from. Where did you find me? The truth this time.”
Mother narrowed her eyes. “What is it you think you know?”
“Frau Adelheit saw the scar on my hand—the same scar that the duke’s third child, Elsebeth, had on her hand. Where did you find me, Mother?”
“You.” She sneered. “You think one little scar proves anything?” Mother tried to laugh, but the sound was more of a wheeze.
“Tell me. Did you steal me away, knowing who I was? Stealing me was your revenge, wasn’t it?”
Her expression went hard again. “I watched you and your brother playing next to the river. I’d lost my baby a month before, and my grandmother met with her unfortunate accident a week later. She sneered at me one too many times for being just like my mother, for having an illegitimate child. She didn’t approve of me taking you—she never approved of me—and I was afraid she would tell them. She made it so easy when she stepped to the edge of that overhang.”
A chill went down Rapunzel’s back. She practically held her breath as she listened to Gothel.
“But I had no one. My family—even Oma—did not love me. The duke—my half brother—had two more children besides you and your brother, and it wasn’t fair. Why should I lose my baby and yet they had so many?” Her eyes were wide and vacant, unfocused.
“I was thinking about taking you. I wanted you. You were so pretty and so innocent. I was your aunt, after all, and I would take very good care of you, not leave you with a careless nursemaid. So I distracted the lack-witted nursemaid by sending a little boy over to ask her a question. I told him to stand behind her so she would turn away from the water. I was hidden on the side of the riverbank where she couldn’t see me. Then I grabbed your foot and pulled you in.
“I dove in and swam under the water until we were out of sight of anyone, then I pulled you out, ran, then hid. They never found you because I had you. I took you and went far away to a little village, and they never knew. All this time, no one knew except me.” She smiled such a cold, dark smile that it reminded her of Balthasar, her attacker.
Rapunzel’s stomach sank to her toes. “Did you not have any compassion for the poor man and woman who thought their child had drowned, the parents who mourned and grieved over their three-year-old girl? You are heartless.”
“Do I deserve nothing? Is that what you think? Do I not deserve a bit of joy and love? Do I deserve loneliness and hatred because no one wanted me? Because the man I loved did not marry me? Because I was the illegitimate child of the duke? But I got my first bit of revenge on all of them when I left and took you with me.”
Rapunzel’s heart clenched in pity, then hardened at the woman’s reasoning. She had hurt innocent people, not Duke Nicholas, her father and the one who had actually hurt Gothel and her mother. “That wasn’t revenge. That was simply vengefulness and spite.”
“And you will make the same mistakes my mother and I made . . . you and your Sir Gerek.” Her jaw twitched.
“No, I won’t. Sir Gerek is not the same kind of person as . . .” Why was she even engaging in this mad argument? It would be better to learn what information she could to try to help Lady Rose and her children escape. “So now you plan to help your former lover defeat Duke Wilhelm, just because he never acknowledged you as his sister?”
“His mother knew about me and no doubt told him to reject me. But now Sir Reginald has returned, and I will have revenge upon them.”
“But what do you mean, Duke Wilhelm rejected you? What did he say? What do you and this Sir Reginald plan to do? Hurt more innocent people?”
“Duke Wilhelm had plenty of opportunities to make right what his father had done. Seventeen years ago I even sent him a note, hoping he would help me, give me a dowry, so Sir Reginald would marry me. But he ignored me.”
“Still, it was not right for you to steal his child.”
“What do you know about what is right?” She put her face so close to Rapunzel’s that Rapunzel could see the red veins spidering over the whites of her eyes. “You left me to be a maidservant, to be with Sir Gerek.” She shook her head. “Perhaps I will not cast you off when Sir Reginald is ruling beside Lord Claybrook and I am his wife. I shall even ask Sir Reginald to watch over you and to not let any evil befall you, should a battle ensue. You know I am your true mother. You were meant to be mine. Rapunzel?”
Rapunzel turned away from her, practically running out of the room. The mad, cruel woman. Rapunzel must refocus. She had to help Sir Gerek. And Lady Rose—her true mother! Lady Rose . . . she had only known her for a few days, and already she felt she was the only loving woman Rapunzel had ever known.
But Rapunzel could not dwell on that now, did not have time to deal with Gothel’s madness. She had to do something to help defeat Claybrook and Sir Reginald—to save her true family.
Rapunzel hurried back to the kitchen. One of Claybrook’s guards stood at each door—the one that faced the castle as well as the back door. The guard did not speak as she approached, but opened the door for her as she passed inside.
The half dozen other maidservants turned to see who was entering the kitchen. Their faces were pale and their eyes wide. Cook was stirring a pot and wiping under her eyes with a corner of her apron.
Cristobel walked toward her and seized her hand. “Lord Claybrook is taking over Hagenheim Castle! What will happen to Lady Rose and the rest of the duke’s family? Claybrook’s men may slaughter us all.”
If the maidservants already knew, Claybrook’s guards would never allow Gerek to leave to retrieve Duke Wilhelm. Had they captured Sir Gerek already?
The other maidservants gathered around her, asking questions. “Did you see anyone?”
“What is happening?”
“Has Duke Wilhelm come back?”
Rapunzel held up her hands. “I don’t think so. All I know is that Sir Gerek saw Claybrook’s men knock the guard in the gatehouse unconscious and now Claybrook’s men are guarding the entrance and are keeping Lady Rose and the rest of the family in the solar.”
Cook started weeping aloud, and several others gasped and called on God and the saints for help.
“What happened here?” Rapunzel asked.
“Claybrook’s guards told us we couldn’t leave the kitchen.” Cristobel placed her hands on her face, her eyes almost bulging from her head. “He’s going to kill us.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Truthfully, she had no idea what Claybrook might do, but it would not help to panic.
She patted the knife in her pocket.
“Cook,” Rapunzel said, “give us some water and pasties to take up to Lady Rose.”
“I don’t think they will be hungry at a time like this,” Cook said in quivering voice.
“But doesn’t she usually have something sent up about this time? I need a reason to get back into the castle.”
“You aren’t trying to escape and leave us here, are you?” She put her hand on her hip.
“I need to find out if Sir Gerek was able to escape. If he did, he will find Duke Wilhelm and tell him what is happening here. We need to help in whatever way we can.”
“What makes you think you would be able to help?” one of the maidservants said.
Rapunzel gave her a cold stare.
Cook sniffed and said, “I will get the pasties ready. Two of you—Rapunzel and Cristobel—can take them up to her if the guards will allow it. Does anyone know what’s happened to Britta?”
No one seemed to know. Rapunzel would keep an eye out for her as well.
Rapunzel took the bucket to fetch some water. She opened the kitchen door and was immediately confronted by the large man guarding the door.
“I need to get some fresh water from the well.”
He stared at her with expressionless eyes. “Come back quickly.”
Rapunzel
nodded and hurried toward the well at the center of the castle yard. All the while she was searching the courtyard.
Three of Claybrook’s men were guarding the castle gate and gatehouse. She didn’t see any of Duke Wilhelm’s men. She looked toward the stable and saw no activity. While standing at the well, slowly pulling the rope on the windlass, a man stumbled out of the stable. He was not wearing any outer clothing, only hose. His chest and head were bare, and a trickle of blood was moving down the side of his face from his hairline.
One of Claybrook’s men, who stood near the gatehouse, suddenly trotted toward him. Rapunzel strained to hear what they were saying to each other.
“. . . Gerek . . . Hit with something . . . Horse is gone.”
Gerek must have taken the guard’s tunic in order to look like one of Claybrook’s men. O Father God, please let it be so. Please let him escape and find Duke Wilhelm.
The two men were joined by two more, and they ran into the stable, no doubt to fetch their own horses and ride after Sir Gerek.
Rapunzel made her way back to the kitchen. Cook got the food prepared, and the servants readied a pitcher of water. Then she and Cristobel carried trays bearing the pasties and water out of the kitchen.
The guard at the door glared at them. “Where are you going?”
“It is time for Lady Rose’s morning repast. We have water and pasties. Would you like to try one?” Rapunzel smiled sweetly. If there was one thing she had learned since coming to work at the castle, it was that men found her . . . appealing. The guard’s glare softened.
She slipped her hand under the cloth covering the tray of food that Cristobel was carrying and held it out to him. He took it from her hand and took a bite. “What’s in the pitcher?” he asked without bothering to chew and swallow his bite of food first.
“Water. Would you like some?”
He scrunched his face. “Move on, then. But don’t go anywhere except the solar.” He grunted. “The guards may not let you in.”