The Countess' Captive (The Fairytale Keeper Book 2) (6 page)

Father’s face is lax with annoyance. Perhaps, if I just allow Galadriel to bore him for a few more days, we’ll be heading back to Cologne within the week.

Galadriel dips into the chair next to mine. The scent of rosewater stings my eyes, and I blink back tears. Did she buy a dozen vials and dump them over her head? I suppose she truly does not count her coins. I lift my cup to my lips, hoping the wine’s woodsy fragrance might mask the pungent rose garden beside me.

“Are you feeling better?” Galadriel’s voice is shrill.

Father sits with a groan.

“Yes, thank you,” I say, evenly.

“Ready for our travels tomorrow?” she prods.

“Yes and you?”

“Yes, I am quite looking forward to getting home.”

Our feigned pleasantries could almost pass as honest.

I’d like to ask Father if he enjoyed the market. I can tell by his face that he did not. He used to hate people who tossed groschens about like they’re pfennigs. Now he plays house with one. Perhaps, he’s becoming one. I’d like to ask him what he bought. A pair of shoes? A brooch?

A dozen quips perch on my tongue. I drown them in wine. I must behave. Father’s threat of convents and everlasting virginity still stand. Neither sentence is worth the satisfaction of a single guilt-inducing jape.

I really am trying to behave. A bar maid brought a freshly baked loaf of bread and butter an hour ago. I guzzled my wine to keep hunger pangs at bay. I’ve valiantly fought the urge to eat it in hopes that Father notices my good manners. All the while, bearing the sweet, doughy scent. I can almost still smell it through Galadriel’s perfume.

Praise God, Father breaks the loaf in half. I clasp my hands below the table to keep from pouncing upon the half–loaf sitting before me. My mouth waters, and after a brief moment, I tear a piece and eat. Meat and cheeses follow.

We eat in near silence. A silence I find discomforting once my belly is filled, and so I chance speaking. Perhaps I can still bring Father some cheer.

“Papa, I learned a new story.”

He grunts in reply, but his sour expression softens.

“It’s called The Three Army Surgeons. Have you heard it? The man who told it to me learned it while on crusade.”

His face perks at the title. Anything to do with battles always sparks an interest in men. This isn’t the typical woman’s tale with a damsel in peril and a knight who saves her. “Would you like to hear it?”

Galadriel peruses Father’s face.

He tears a hunk of chicken from the bone with his teeth. “Surgeons, eh? Sounds like a bloody one.”

“Not so bloody that it would spoil
your
appetite.”

He jerks his head in Galadriel’s direction. “No, but it might spoil the lady’s.”

“I think I can handle it,” she says, insulted.

If it were indeed a gory tale, I doubt she could. I’ve made her retch before with little effort, but she was ill that morning from the near barrel of ale she’d consumed the night before.

I look to Father for his approval.

He shrugs, and I tell the story.

I’m half–way through the tale before Galadriel’s eyelids bob. She struggles to maintain her posture, and I pause the tale to ask her if she is well. Father turns to her and places one hand on her back, the other on her hand. He whispers in her ear, and she whispers back before patting his hand and bidding us good night.

I finish the tale, and at the end, Father laughs, but the cheer in his face quickly washes away, melting into sadness.

I remind him of Mama.

He swallows the grief hard, and though it pleases me to see her death still pains him, I hate to see him hurting so.

“Did you like it, Papa?” I ask, and he returns to me, leaving the dark recesses of his guilt and mourning.

“Yes, very good,” he says distantly.

He coughs and orders another round of wine. I lose count of all the mugs, but with each one he grows more jovial, and I, more tired. We reminisce until my eyelids grow heavy, and we stumble to our beds.

I roll over toward the wall, more cautiously this morning, and pull the blankets over my head to keep the light, and hopefully the throbbing in my head, at bay.

Wine. Damn wine.

I lower the blankets, squinting open an eye to gauge the brightness and guess the time.

I immediately regret it.

Blinding is not a time of day. I draw the covers back up and roll away from the scorching light.

Weren’t we supposed to leave today at dawn? So why didn’t we?

My head throbs, and I groan. I rise, pushing the tangles of hair from my forehead and shielding my eyes from the bright morning sun. The coolness in the air feels good. I sigh and stretch. My eyes scan the room for my chainse and surcote, stopping on the mug sitting on the desk. A mug that had been there since the old physician left it for me yesterday.

Then, I remember what I did last night.

Yesterday afternoon, I poked my head into the tavern to make sure Father and Galadriel had not yet returned. It was empty. I made my way to the bar and sat on the stool. The pretty blond maid, who had brought my mug earlier, approached.

“Oh, my head. It aches,” I said, exaggerating the pain.

“Are the herbs not working yet?” she asked. “The physician you had is the best in the city. You must give the remedy more time.”

“Of course, do you think I could get two mugs of wine for the night? I doubt I shall come down for supper and would hate to bother you twice,” I asked, and she complied.

I nodded in appreciation and rushed to my room, locking the door behind me. I gulped down half the wine from one mug, and then mixed half the physician’s potion into the rest, filling it again.

When the sun began its decent, I returned to the tavern, taking the mugs with me. I found an empty table—and sat the tainted mug before Galadriel’s seat.

Galadriel, unsuspecting, drank the entire mug.

Not long after her eyelids drooped, and she excused herself to bed.

The physician said the potion caused sleep, so I enjoyed my time with Father. But now I wonder, was it poison?

What if it killed her?

I gave it to her.

What if I killed her?

I dart to the other side of the room, pressing my ear against the rough wooden wall between us, listening for several moments, but hearing nothing. I sniff for the rancid, sickly sweet stench of death, finding the sharp scent of manure and smoldering embers of last night’s fire thick in the air instead. Surely if she’d died someone would have come to tell me by now. I give up on eavesdropping and toss my surcote over my head. My thoughts race too fast to process.

I could be a killer.

It is a line that once crossed, cannot be uncrossed. What if I am on the other side of that line? Will God damn me for it? Will I burn for eternity in hellfire? Will I never see Mama again?

But it isn’t really murder, is it? I didn’t really know what was in that mug, so it couldn’t be murder. Besides, if she intended to poison me, and in turn I accidentally poisoned her, she’d be getting what she deserved. Really I would be defending myself, and Father, from a madwoman.

Her death might be the best outcome. Father and I would have to return to Cologne. We wouldn’t have anywhere else to go. I could warn Ivo to stay away from Elias myself.

We have no possessions, no coin. Soren, the vile priest who framed us for uncommitted crimes, had all our possessions burned in the streets only a week ago. But I could apprentice with another cobbler, earning coin that I could use to buy another set of cobbling tools. Then Father and I could return to our trade. In time, we could save enough coin to pay the rent on our home. Ivo would finish his apprenticeship, and we could be married. All in all, it would be best if I knocked on the door to Galadriel and Father’s room to find him saddened over her corpse.

I shake these wicked, calculating thoughts from my head. No matter how much I hate Galadriel, no matter how many empty threats she makes, I can’t let her turn me into a killer.

If I kill for my own gains, if I sentence a person to death without trial, then I am no better than Konrad Von Hochstaden—the man who sent us to the stocks knowing we were innocent and then used Soren’s crime against us to hang him without a trial.

I run my fingers quickly through my hair, braid it hastily, and start to head for the hallway. Caution, from a thought not fully formed, stops me at the door. If I enter the room in a panic, she’ll know what I did. I cannot tempt her to harm Ivo. I take a few deep breaths and look into the water basin for my reflection. Tendrils of my black hair branch out of my sloppy braid, and my brow furrows with worry.

I no longer have the privilege of transparency.

I unbraid my wild hair, run my fingers carefully through it, and neatly plait it again. I stick my whole face in the basin, the shock of the cold easing my anxiety. I dry my face and wait for the splotchy redness on my nose and cheeks to fade. I place my hand on the door, taking one more deep breath, and I push it open, heading out into the hallway, to Galadriel and Father’s room.

I knock lightly, and Father opens the door.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says, and I feel stung.

“I thought you might have left without me,” I muse, trying inconspicuously to look past him to Galadriel. He follows my gaze. “What is the matter with her?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs, his worried eyes upon her. “She won’t rise.”

I kneel down next to her and shake her shoulder. “Galadriel,” I say loudly, but she hardly stirs. “Galadriel!” I slap at her cheek.

She grumbles and rolls away from me. I feel her head for fever, but there is none. I turn to Father. “What are her symptoms?”

“I only woke a little while ago.”

“Has she retched?” I ask. “She hasn’t a fever. She isn’t pale. Does she have chills?”

He shakes his head. “She just cannot wake.”

“Then, let her sleep. If she isn’t well by tomorrow, summon the doctor.”

“I’ve already summoned him,” he says.

His words turn my stomach to water. That doctor is no fool. He’ll take one look at Galadriel and know what I did, that I gave Galadriel the potion meant for me.
What if
he
tells Father? What if Galadriel finds out? My heart thuds hard in my chest.
Think, Adelaide. Think.

”Galadriel had a doctor visit me yesterday,” I confess. “He did nothing but rob her of coin. The man said he could make my knot disappear by this morning,” I lie. “Look at it, just as horrid as the day I got it. I hope that is not the doctor you sent for.”

Father narrows his eyes. “Galadriel didn’t tell me of this.”

“We didn’t want to worry you.”

His lips form a hard line. “Go to the tavern and see who the barkeep sent for.”

I descend the stairs just in time to see the elderly doctor shuffle his way through the door. I rush over to him.

“Your services are no longer needed,” I say.

He eyes me suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve taken too long to get here. We’d sent for another doctor some time ago, and he sees her as we speak,” I lie.

His silver, caterpillar eyebrows knit. “Oh, and which doctor is that?”

“I did not get his name,” I say. He’ll keep asking questions if I don’t get rid of him. “I must attend to my mistress. Now be off.”

He huffs and turns around, grumbling beneath his breath as he lurches back into the street. I inhale, close my eyes, and release the breath. Praise God, it worked.

Should I send for another doctor? I suppose so. Better to send for a doctor than to have Father catch me lying about sending for one. But there’s no reason to be too quick about it.

I sink into a chair at one of the empty tables and catch the gaze of two serving girls who must have caught my heated exchange with the doctor. One heads to the kitchen. The other heaves an annoyed sigh as she approaches. It is too late to break my fast and not near dinner. The place is empty, and I’ve interrupted this lull in her day.

“Dinner won’t be for many hours. Ale or wine?”

“A doctor actually.”

A shadow of irritation darkens her face. “You’d already summoned one—and then you sent him away.”

“That man is a bit old to be a doctor.”

“He’s the most reputable doctor in the city.”

“I don’t doubt that he was—twenty years ago. Please send for another one,” I say. “And I will need diluted wine—and bread if you have any left. My father hadn’t a chance to break his fast.”

The kitchen maid marches off, her blond braid swaying back and forth. She returns shortly after, shoving the bread and wine at me. “I sent for another doctor,” she huffs. “God knows when he’ll get here. I hope your friend isn’t dead by then.”

“Thank you,” I say.

Her face pinches for a moment before she shakes her head and walks away.

Good.

The longer it takes for a doctor to get here, the longer we are in Oppenheim. Father shall have time to change his mind about this cursed trip and the fragile creature he’s decided to bed with. We might be home sooner than I thought.

Or maybe Galadriel shall die… I swallow hard at the thought.

I take the bread and wine to Father, urging him to eat. He sits in vigil at the top of the bed, his jaw clenched and brow knit. I bend and feel Galadriel’s forehead. She’s neither feverish nor clammy. Her porcelain skin glows healthily, but she sleeps like the dead. Realizing there is nothing I can do—not that I would do much of anything even if I could—I leave him with her.

I keep my door cracked and perch along the edge of my bed. The mug left by the doctor yesterday still sits on the desk. I really should have thrown out the rest of its contents after I tainted Galadriel’s wine. It is evidence against me—if anyone should think to examine it—though I doubt anyone shall.

I’ve approached the potion a dozen times but hesitate at tossing out the remnants. It glares at me accusingly, and I look away, but the weight of its stare burns into me.
“You did this to her,
” it says.
“If she dies it is your fault.”

“If she dies, it is her own fault,” I say, sounding more ambivalent than I feel.

“You could find out if I’m poison,”
the mug beckons.
“Just a little taste won’t hurt you too badly. If I am not poison, that is.”

I approach the desk and look into the mug, staring at the mixture of wine and herbs. I see my own frighteningly curious reflection staring back at me and take a step back.

“She’s sick,” I say. “That’s all. She caught something. You were only meant to make her sleep.”

“That’s not what you thought when you slipped me into her drink,”
the malicious potion laughs, and I escape into the hallway.

I knock on Father’s door. It swings open, for it was already ajar. A doctor still has not arrived.

“Papa…” I say. He turns his head but hasn’t moved from his spot beside Galadriel.

I don’t know how to ask what I intend to, so I just stand before him, opening my mouth to speak and then closing it again.

“What?” Father huffs. He looks so tired.

“I was wondering if you would allow me to go into the city and fetch a doctor myself. I worry if it takes too long…”