Follow My Lead (30 page)

“It’s just . . . why do we have to steal the food?” she asked quietly.

“Because we have no money?” Jason replied, his eyebrow up. He was a little surprised at having to explain the obvious to her, especially considering how tightly she had tracked her funds the whole journey.

“I know that, but hear me out.” She pulled him to one side, so they were not in the midst of the jostling crowd angling to get nearer the parade route for better access to the goodies that were being tossed out. “If we steal this food and are spotted, we are going to have to run—and we have nowhere to run to, especially with the entire town chasing after us. But if we instead attempt to
earn
some money, then we will be able to purchase not only the food but maybe a coach ticket as well—maybe not all the way to Vienna, but at least we won’t have to walk the whole distance.”

Jason was only able to blink at her as he chewed over her argument. Meanwhile, Winn shifted her weight on her feet, apparently uncomfortable under his gaze. “I know you think I never think things through, but perhaps this time—”

“No,” Jason interrupted. “No, it’s a good plan. I’m just trying to think of what we could possibly do to earn money.”

Earning money itself being a foreign concept to a Duke, Jason thought with a grimace, or else he’d like to think he would have come up with this plan himself. But, if he had, he would not have gotten to see the relieved smile on Winn’s face, creasing so wide as to cause a dimple in her left cheek—a sight he hadn’t seen before. A worthy sight, indeed.

“Ah . . . I don’t know,” Winn replied. “What can you do?”

“Head one of the largest estates in England and vote in the House of Lords,” Jason replied. “And brush down a horse. What can you do?”

“Write a paper on the difference between Brunelleschi’s and Ghiberti’s bronze work,” Winn quipped and then, after a thought, “and argue with the butcher.”

“Well . . . we are two utterly useless people,” Jason surmised. “Except for the butcher.”

“And the horses.”

Just then, both Jason’s and Winn’s stomach grumbled in harmony.

“We had better find something we can do fairly quickly,” Jason said in answer to his hunger’s loudly asked question. “Else thievery may be our only option.”

They asked at the inn on the main street, crowded with townsfolk drinking merrily, if they needed any additional servers. They were told no. They asked if the vendors at the various stalls needed someone to watch their wares while they took a break. They were thoroughly rebuffed. They even asked the village priest if he needed any assistance cleaning up the rectory—they were told a kind negative and to go with God.

“So much for Christian charity,” Jason grumbled.

“It’s not that they are mean people,” Winn replied, biting down on a hard candy. They had luckily managed to scrounge enough of the sweets being tossed by the parade participants into the crowd to quell the worst of Winn’s hunger, but the little treats had only served to whet Jason’s appetite. He was, if possible, hungrier than before. “It’s that they don’t know us. We are outsiders on their day of celebration.”

“Are you telling me that the juggler that was in the parade and the man walking on stilts are from this town?”

“No, but they were hired. We are asking for work. There’s a difference.”

Jason couldn’t argue. They stood out like sore thumbs in this little place. Winn’s constant English and Jason’s well-made (if completely ruined and soiled) clothes made them objects of curiosity. More than a few of the celebrating villagers (and what they were celebrating was still undetermined) had shot them looks of suspicion. After all, a festival brought out not only the hardworking members of the community but the less desirable ones as well—pickpockets and petty thieves were a well-known danger.

“Perhaps we should give up and find a different town,” Winn whispered, defeated.

Jason sent her a look of utter horror. “Winn, I am not venturing any closer to Vienna until we get either some money or food or both. Now come along. We tried all the businesses on the parade route—maybe we should try some place off the beaten path.”

And so they did, turning up a side street, and being met quite quickly by an innkeeper so enthusiastic for their presence that Jason was physically set back on his heels.

“Mein Herr! Fräulein!”
the man cried. He continued in his native tongue, so excited and rushed that Jason had a hard time keeping up. “Are you hungry? Tired? Come, come rest your boots, come and sit and eat and watch the parade . . . through that tiny alley there.”

They were ushered in through the main inn yard, past the stables, and to an outdoor table that overlooked a small alley that allowed a slight view of the parade passing by.

“We have the best cuts of meat and the best spaetzle in all Lupburg. My beloved Heidi, she had the largest cow slaughtered just for the occasion.” The eager gentleman, who seemed to have no hair upon his head at all, save that which came out of his ears, virtually forced them into their seats, and with a single clap of his hands, had two steaming, overstuffed plates of the most delicious food Jason had ever seen placed in front of them.

“Would you like ale? Of course you would! Best ale in all Bavaria! Aged in barrels in my own cellar!” they were told, and with another clap of his hands, two foamy delicious tankards of ale were placed in front of them.

And well . . . Jason couldn’t help it. He was too hungry to
not
dig into the pile of food placed before him. It was beyond temptation, beyond delight, beyond satisfaction, to have the weight of meat and potatoes slide across his tongue, down his throat, and into his stomach. He was three bites in before he heard the startled, strangled sound from across the table and looked up, meeting Winn’s pointed look.

“Wunderbar!” the hairless innkeeper cried, upon seeing Jason’s appetite. “You are going to want seconds.” He turned over his shoulder and called to the kitchens, “Heidi, my love, more food!”

“No!” Jason said immediately, his mouth so full of food, he had to chew and swallow before he could continue. But one last longing look at the food still on his plate earned him a kick in the shins from Winn, and reluctantly he continued. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said in the innkeeper’s dialect, “but I should not have eaten this food. We cannot pay for it.”

They watched as the hairless innkeeper’s face went from gleeful hope to inconsolable depression in a mere fraction of a second. Then, the man’s entire posture collapsed into despair as he flopped down on the bench next to Winn.

“Of course you can’t pay!” he said to Jason. “The first customers we’ve had all day, and they are beggars!”

He threw his face into his hands and began a terrifically undignified bawl. From the kitchens beyond, they heard a cabinet slam. His beloved Heidi, Jason thought ruefully, obviously a compassionate individual.

Winn’s eyes sought his and from her look he knew she wanted desperately to know what was going on, but Jason could only shrug.

“Uh, I’d be more than happy to work for the food . . .” Jason ventured in German to the innkeeper. “Herr . . .”

“Wurtzer,” the innkeeper answered. “And I’m sorry, but I have no work to give you. Every year, the festival of
Sonnenwende
is the biggest event for my pub and inn. People come from three villages over to try my beloved Heidi’s spaetzle
.
”

“Sonnenwende?”
Winn asked, managing to catch one word out of the thicket of Herr Wurtzer’s speech. “Of course!— Jason, how could we be so stupid. It’s the twenty-second of June, the solstice. It’s the midsummer festival!”

“Excellent,” he responded, only a touch sarcastically. “Now that that mystery is solved, perhaps we can return to the problem at hand.” He nodded toward the weeping Wurtzer, now snorting in great hunks of air in between his sobs.

“Every year, we have hundreds and hundreds of people! But this year? This year, the village decides to change the parade route! Now it goes past Brauer’s pub . . . whose son just married the daughter of the town mayor, so I have
no idea
how that decision was made . . . after all, Brauer’s is not on the main route of town—here is where there are the largest tables, the best rooms, here are the changing horses for the post!” Wurtzer went from mournful to seething in the flash of an instant. “Brauer. His ale is practically water, but since people can see the parade from there, they all flock to him. Even my own servants! They abandon me—with no one here to serve, they go down to watch the parade and buy Brauer’s watered ale and stale meats! And why? Because Brauer has the parade route—and he hired the magicians and the jugglers to make sure the crowd stayed there, even after the parade is over.”

Winn’s eyes told Jason she needed a translation, and so he provided her a more succinct version than Wurtzer had given. And almost immediately, Winn’s hand went to her locket, tugging. There was, after all, a problem to be solved.

“It sounds like Herr Wurtzer needs something to attract people to his establishment once the parade ends,” Winn said. “Something even more outrageous than jugglers and magicians.”

“I suppose,” Jason replied, “but neither your list of accomplishments nor mine includes things more outrageous than jugglers or magicians.”

“No,” Winn answered slowly, “but you did mention your facility with horses.”

A nod of her head indicated that he should look over his shoulder. Doing so, he spied the small stables. Twelve stalls, neatly in a row, lining the main yard of the inn, the horses in them either nickering or slowly chewing the oats and hay in their buckets, as bored of the view as any potential customer might have been.

“So?” Jason asked. “Having me work with the horses is not much of sight, I assure you.”

“Not you, no,” Winn countered. “But having the Duke of Rayne working in the stables is something of a spectacle.” Off his shocked look, Winn continued. “You know sometimes I think you forget you have that title.”

“I know very well I have that title,” Jason drawled. “But I thought we long ago agreed it would be better if I didn’t use it. Anonymity and all that.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures?” She shrugged. “Besides, that was when we did not want to draw attention to ourselves. Herr Wurtzer
needs
attention—attention you can provide.”

“How? By forking straw bedding?” he argued.

“By . . . performing,” Winn rationalized.

Jason took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. And as he did so, he saw the plate of food in front of him, its smell still an intoxication. But he also saw, edging out from beneath the table, Winn’s shoes. Scuffed raw. If he did this, maybe he could save her feet—and his—from a more arduous journey than necessary. However, there was one more piece of argument to be made.

“What about George?” he asked, and watched as her eyes flew to his face.

Winn’s shoulders collapsed. “George managed to track us to Nuremberg without us using your title. I think we need to give up the ghost of the idea that we have any talent for subterfuge.”

He had to smile at the truth of that, exhale a breath of laughter.

“If we’re lucky,” Jason mulled, “George thinks you’ve headed back for England, proof in hand.”

“And if we are not, our best hope now is to outrun him.” She bit her lip, watching his face for his reaction. “And we’ll move faster with money.”

He chewed this over. “What do you propose?”

Winn sat up straight, ready to engage in negotiations. “Herr Wurtzer,” she began, and after a pointed look to Jason, he translated. “You may not be aware, but you are in the presence of one of the most famous aristocrats in Britain. This man is the Duke of Rayne, known far and wide as the bender of wills and breaker of hearts.”

“Now hold on,” Jason interrupted, but the sharp toe of her scuffed boot told him to simply continue translating.

“Unfortunate circumstances have lead him to your door,” Winn continued. “But despite his noble upbringing, he is a man of morality and willing to work for what he owes . . . and then some.”

Wurtzer looked utterly dubious as he eyed Jason. Took in his bearded visage, his rumpled, dirty clothes. As the innkeeper perused Jason’s unimpressive form, Winn cleared her throat and conspicuously nodded to the gold ducal signet ring, the only thing of any worth Jason had left on him, on his right hand.

While Wurtzer’s eyebrow went up, he still held the posture of a man unconvinced. “You could have stolen that,” he said, pursing his lips in disapproval.

When Jason translated that little bit of (to be truthful, angering) information, Winn squared her shoulders and looked him dead in the eye.

“Jason,” she whispered. “You have to prove you’re a Duke.”

“And how do I do that?” he argued.

“I don’t know—act like a Duke!”

“I
am
a Duke, I don’t have to act like one.”