Page 5 of The Noble Servant

Magdalen pulled a clean cloth from her sleeve. She pressed it against Lenhart’s eyebrow to stanch the bleeding.

“Get up!” Erlich yelled.

Lenhart took the cloth and nudged her away. Fear and compassion shone in his eyes—he was worried they would hurt her.

Magdalen stood to her feet.

Both Erlich and Agnes glared at her out of narrowed eyes and hardened faces. But the knife Agnes thrust at Magdalen’s face was shaking.

“Agnes, you cannot be in earnest.”

“I am. And if you do not make haste to remove your dress, my father will rip it off.”

Erlich stepped around Agnes and stalked toward Magdalen.

“Very well.” Magdalen reached under one arm to untie thelaces at the side of her overdress. “But I do not know how you think you will get away with this. The duke knows what I look like. Do you think he will believe an imposter?”

“He will have no choice. I will show up saying I am you. I do not look so different from you. While wearing your clothes, I will be just as good as any baron’s daughter.”

Magdalen could do naught except comply. Underneath her overdress she wore a long-sleeved, ankle-length chemise. She untied the other side of her sleeveless blue overdress.

“And you had best not get any ideas about telling the duke who you are, or I will kill you and the boy. At least we don’t have to worry about him telling anyone.” Erlich alluded to Lenhart’s muteness.

Magdalen’s hands began to tremble. If Agnes and her father killed Lenhart and her, how would anyone know what had happened to them? In fact, Erlich and Agnes might decide they were safer if they did. Should Magdalen try to fight them?

Her friend Avelina knew what to do in a fight, knew how to think and plan and devise a way of escape. But Magdalen had been raised gently, taught little more than how to dance and greet dukes and princes and embroider tapestries. She had no idea how to contend with rebels and fiends.

Erlich snatched the dress as soon as Magdalen pulled it over her head. He held Agnes’s knife pointed at Magdalen’s heart while Agnes took off her own dress and threw it on the ground. Then she donned Magdalen’s blue silk.

Agnes and Erlich still stared at her, so Magdalen picked up Agnes’s brown woolen kirtle and pulled it on, letting the stiff material fall to her ankles, then tied the laces at the top of the bodice.

“Now give me your necklace.” Agnes pointed with her knife at the rock pendant her father had given her. “Do it or I’ll cut it off.”

Magdalen’s hands were steady as she unclasped her precious necklace, which represented the bond she and her father shared, all the times they had gone to the mines together and he had carefully taught her about copper ore and how it was mined, stories about the beautiful countryside around Mallin.

Her blood was ice-cold as she handed the necklace over to Agnes and watched her put it around her own neck. Magdalen would bide her time and watch for an opportunity. She would get her necklace back from the usurper.

Magdalen was a baron’s daughter. She could get help from one of the noblemen and women who knew her mother. But they were headed in the opposite direction of her friends in Thornbeck, and no one who had met Magdalen lived anywhere near here, except the Duke of Wolfberg. His sister, Gertrudt, had been at Lord Thornbeck’s two-week party, but she had married and moved far away.

What if she told the duke she was Lady Magdalen and he didn’t believe her? Agnes had the same pale skin and similar hair coloring, though Magdalen’s was reddish-blonde and Agnes’s was more of a yellow-blonde. Magdalen’s eyes were green and Agnes’s were hazel. But he still might believe Agnes was really her.

“Now I shall ride in the cart the rest of the way to Wolfberg while you walk beside it.” Agnes smirked in a way that made Magdalen clench her teeth.

She would plan a way of escape, just as Avelina would have. Even when she was afraid, Avelina had worked hard to stand up to the evil that had been afoot in Thornbeck Castle. Did Magdalen have that kind of strength and determination?

She was about to find out.

Chapter Three

Steffan had slept at the inn a day’s ride northeast of Prague, but he awoke with the same heavy feeling he’d lain down with.

He traveled an hour before coming to a village. The church’s bell tower rose above all the other buildings, and he turned his horse in its direction, with his attackers’ horses following behind by use of tethers.

He tied the horses to a stake just outside the church and went inside. “Is the priest here? I need someone to hear my confession.”

“I am here,” a voice called from behind the chancel. “Go in and I shall be there in a few moments.”

Steffan stepped into the wooden confessional box and closed the curtain, then lowered himself to the kneeling bench, focusing his mind on the Lord Jesus’ death on the cross.