Surely her father was aware of such happenings. He would not be so cold hearted as to allow her fate to come to that.
She lifted her chin enough to mark her progress.Almost there. Her heart lightened and her feet picked up pace.
Strong fingers wrapped around her upper arm and tugged her to a halt. “Where are you going, girl?”
Christyne’s breath hitched as her mind raced. What to do? She daren’t raise her face to let the man look upon her fully lest she be found out, but the grip on her arm demanded an answer.
“Your master is expected back with his new bride in three days’ time. The solar and adjoining rooms need airing and a thorough cleaning. Go.”
She eyed the end of the hall that led toward the gate to the village. The scents of birch and pine beckoned. Her father’s quarters lay in the opposite direction. The cold stone walls mocked.
“Are ye deaf, girl, or addle-brained? I said go. Now.”
Afraid that if she tarried longer the man would use force, she scurried around him and headed almost the same direction whence she came. When she reached the end of the hall, she glanced back. The man remained but conversed with another servant.
Heart pounding within her chest, she dashed to the side, away from the solar and toward the courtyard. Kitchen maids with woven baskets slung across their shoulders picked grapes from the vines her ancestors had planted more than a hundred years before. No one glanced up from their work.
The borrowed clothes were working. As princess, already she would have been stopped by a helpful servant wishing to fulfil her mistress’s desires. But this… This she needed to do with her own two hands.
Steps led down to the chapel housing a number of relics her father had purchased when her mother was alive and suffering illness. But none of the sacred objects had brought healing, and her mother had yet died.
She pushed back those thoughts and placed a hand over the heavy pouch on her hip. Though her father put stock in relics and had even purchased indulgences to release his wife from purgatory, Christyne purposed to use the money she had secreted away to help those yet living.
If she could only get through the portcullis.
Sliding around the outer walls, she passed the chapel and strangled a cry of joy. An open gate. Her muscles bunched with the desire to run through the raised portcullis. Instead, she retained her sedate walking pace. As she drew near, she held her breath, ears open and senses aware, but no shouts ofhaltpierced the morning dew. No alarm was raised. With a small bubble of laughter, she hurried to the tree line and flung herself behind a stout trunk, pulling in a deep lungful of air.
She had made it. Outside the castle walls, with no one the wiser save Hette.
With a shove against the coarse bark, she began the trek down the mountainside to the village. Now to do what her father should have been doing all along—help his people.
The trees towered over her, standing silent sentry as she picked her way along the path, their heavily fringed branches working as a blanket against the sun, blocking its warmth and light. These woods had earned the designation of Black Forest, though she gave no credence to the tales parents often told to frighten their children. Unlike the ones told of the landsknecht and convents, the stories about the forest were merely fables. Christyne herself had built such a tale in her mind about fairies and wood sprites.
The snap of a twig and rustle of branches pulled her to a stop. Had her own feet produced the noise? Straining her ears, she listened, her heart quickening its pace in her chest.
She had no weapon save a meat dagger, and that small blade would do little damage to a man bent on mischief. Could it have been a landsknecht in her father’s employ? Little they would believe she the princess, dressed as she was. Nay. More thekampfraushe looked than any other.
A low, pain-filled moan rose from the leaf-littered floor to the west. Her weight shifted between her feet. Should she see whence the sound came or be about her mission? She swayed where she stood. Her heart longed to help the people, did it not?
Another moan. A cry for aid if there ever was one.
Decision made, she hitched her skirts and scrambled over a dead log, her feed thudding softly on the carpet of leaves and pine needles. She stopped to listen again. A bird chirped. Branches scraped against each other in a gust of wind.
She waited two heartbeats, and then a cough erupted from the bushes beside her. As she pushed past the foliage, her stomach rose and lodged in her throat.
Not a landsknecht, for the man lying prostrate on the ground wore a dusty jerkin smeared with grime and slashed from thorny bristles. Her gaze scanned the length of him, and her breath caught. Through his torn black hosen, she could see the tip of a bloody arrow protruding from the meaty flesh of his upper leg. His eyes squeezed shut. If not for the low sounds of pain vibrating from his throat, she would believe his spirit had already departed his body.
She stifled a cry and fell to her knees beside the man, reaching out but pausing before touching the point of the arrowhead. The offending barb must needs come out, but how without causing more damage? Her mind worked back upon injuries her father’s warriors received in training and skirmishes. They tended their own wounds, and as princess, her presence was expressly forbidden, but had she witnessed a man shot through with an arrow?
Indecision caused her hand to shake. Perchance someone else was about…
Rising, she whirled in a circle, desperate for another to appear who might have the skills to aid the fallen man. She took in her surroundings. The stately trees, boulders with green moss growing across their stone faces, grasses pushed over by the tread of feet. No one emerged from behind wood or stone, and no traveler journeyed across the path—which suggested whoever loosed the arrow had fled long ago. That thought caused her to release the air in her lungs. The next, however, seized her chest.
She alone must save the poor wretch.
But by what means? Nothing sprang to mind, though she searched around her and dug through her memory. She sighed and returned her gaze to the man. Alas, she could not leave him face down in the dirt any longer. Making the sign of the cross, she dropped back down to the forest floor. Her fingers shook as she gripped his shoulder and a span of hosen below his hip.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name.
