The Golden Braid (29 page)

Why should she be so affected by Sir Gerek? He was only a man who had saved her life and had taught her to read. He was a knight in Duke Wilhelm's service, so of course he saved her. He would save anyone who was in need of help.

But it was more than that. He liked her. She knew he did. He cared about her and considered her a friend. At this moment she had his books inside her kirtle pocket, where she kept them so she could reread them when she had a free moment. She should give them back to him, now that he had returned and all was once again back as it should be, with Duke Wilhelm in his rightful place.

Lingering outside the kitchen, she said a prayer for Lady Rose, her mother, that she and Rapunzel's brothers and sisters were well now. She should be helping the others in the kitchen, preparing a feast for Duke Wilhelm and his men, who had freed them from Lord Claybrook.

She took a step and a shadow fell across her path.

“Here you are.” Gothel stood, her hands folded in front of her.

“You startled me.” Her skin prickled. Somehow Gothel had eluded capture by Duke Wilhelm's men. Or perhaps no one realized that she had been helping Claybrook and Sir Reginald. She'd been their spy, bringing them news of what the people in Hagenheim knew about Duke Wilhelm's whereabouts and who knew what else.

“Are you pleased with your decision to come to Hagenheim Castle to be a kitchen servant?” Gothel's face twisted into a sneer. “Why have you not told Duke Wilhelm and his precious Rose that you are their daughter? Are you afraid they won't believe you?”

“I was waiting until things settled down.” She need not defend herself or feel pressure to tell Gothel anything.

But this was the woman who'd raised her, the woman who took care of her when she was sick, who braided her hair every night and told her she was the most talented and lovable person in the world. To think that she was cruel enough to steal her away from her loving parents suddenly hit Rapunzel's heart like a battle-ax.

“Where is Sir Reginald? Will you not try to rescue the man you love from Duke Wilhelm? Perhaps you can steal him away just as you stole me.”

Gothel's face was nearly blank, her eyes strangely vacant as she stared down at the ground. “Sir Reginald . . . is dead.”

“Dead? Oh, Mother, I'm so sorry.” She had promised herself never to call her that again. But in her sympathy, it slipped out.

“He deserved to die. He would have betrayed me—again. He was
only using me. He had already been granted permission from Lord Claybrook to marry Duke Wilhelm's niece, Anne.”

Rapunzel took a step back.

Gothel stepped toward her. “I was still not good enough for him. And I was right. All those years that I told you never to trust a man, that men only wanted one thing from you, that a man would not marry you if he would gain nothing in the bargain . . . I was right. But I did not listen to my own words of wisdom. It was your fault.” She pierced Rapunzel with a look.

“My fault? How?”

Gothel's breath seemed to come faster, even though she was standing still. “If you had not deserted me, if I had not been alone and weighed down with sorrow, I would not have been duped by him again. I would have realized he was not sincere, that he was using me and making a fool of me again.” She stepped closer to Rapunzel. “I would not have listened to his lies about marrying me. But things can go back to the way they were before . . . before I listened to him . . . before you abandoned me.”

Suddenly, Gothel grabbed Rapunzel by the nose and by her hair, stuffed something inside her mouth, and held her head back so far she became disoriented. She lashed out with her hands but was only beating the air. When she tried to kick, she nearly fell on her back. She tried to spit the substance out, but she couldn't breathe and was forced to swallow whatever it was.

She clawed at Gothel's hand, but by the time she was able to pry her loose, Rapunzel's vision was fading. And she was falling.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Gerek ate heartily while listening to the story of Lord
Claybrook's capture. Colin's face turned pink while he and Lady Margaretha explained what happened. Apparently Colin had been distracted by Lady Margaretha, and Claybrook had come up behind him with a raised sword. But Colin defeated him in a brief sword fight, shortened by the fact that Claybrook had been poisoned the night before by the maidservants. In fact, many of Claybrook's knights had been poisoned by the kitchen servants and were too sick to fight well.

That was one story he was anxious to ask Rapunzel about. She no doubt had a hand in that brave act.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to see Frau Adelheit standing just behind him.

“Sir Gerek, I am sorry to interrupt your meal, but Rapunzel is missing. None of us have seen her since she went to change her clothing, and that was before the preparation of the meal.”

Gerek stood and stepped over the bench where he was sitting at the raised dais with the family. “Perhaps she went for a walk. She likes to sit under the tree in the south meadow.”

“No, I sent someone there to look for her. I am afraid something has happened to her.” Her eyes were round, and she was clutching her hands.

It seemed strange that Frau Adelheit was so anxious about a maidservant. But Rapunzel was special—strong, kind, and reliable.

“What makes you think something has happened to her?”

She hesitated. She knew something that she didn't want to tell him. “I have reason to think that her mother—Gothel—may be planning to do something terrible to her.”

Gerek felt the blood start to pump through his veins, as if he was preparing for battle. “I saw her mother. She was in the castle yard by the kitchen.”

Frau Adelheit's lips turned white. “Oh no. She must have taken her. You must go after her.”

“Surely her mother wouldn't hurt her.”

“She would. I believe she would! Please, you must find her and bring her back. She will give Rapunzel a sleeping potion. I believe she would do anything to get her away from Hagenheim.”

“I shall find her.”

Without pausing to tell anyone where he was going, Gerek hurried out to the stables, saddled his horse, and started out to the small house where Rapunzel and her mother had lived.

He arrived at the house in the woods without seeing them. He dismounted and knocked on the front door, which creaked open at the first knock.

“Rapunzel? Are you here?” He stepped inside. There were no live coals in the fire pit, and their belongings had been removed. He walked around the entire one-room house, which took only a few moments. He stepped out the back door, but there were no animals. She had undoubtedly taken the donkey, the ox, and the cart with her—and she must have stopped by the castle to get Rapunzel as well.

Where had they gone? What had she done to Rapunzel? How would he ever find them?

His heart sank a little more with each question. But he had no time for despair. He had to make haste and find her, find their trail.

As he mounted his horse and rode back toward Hagenheim, he urged Donner into a gallop. He had to see if he could pick up some kind of trail from the location where her mother must have taken her.

He arrived several minutes later at the castle. He walked behind the kitchen, where he could see the maidservants' sleeping quarters—a small wooden building several feet from the kitchen. Between the two buildings he noticed the dirt path was slightly churned up. Was this where Rapunzel had encountered her mother?

He looked carefully at the new spring grass. The ground was soft from recent rain. He followed the two lines her feet had made until they ended beside some cart tracks.

During the confusion just after the battle, Gothel must have brought her donkey and cart into the castle yard and waited for Rapunzel to come out. She intercepted her just outside the servants' sleeping quarters, and must have either knocked Rapunzel unconscious or given her some kind of potion to make her lose her strength.

Rapunzel didn't deserve to be mistreated. Inexplicably, the memory of his mother floated in front of his eyes. His mother had not deserved to be abused and thrown down the stairs just because she had wanted her son home for the Christmas holy day. And Rapunzel didn't deserve to be taken against her will by an insane woman bent on only-God-knew-what.

“God,” he whispered into the air, “make me her champion. Give me the strength and ability to find her. Show me where to look, where to go, how to find her.”

He heard someone approaching and turned to see Frau Adelheit. “You didn't find her?”

“I went to her house, but her mother has taken everything and left. I think she brought her donkey and cart here and took her. I'll
follow this trail as far as I can and hopefully overtake them, but they have at least a two-hour head start.”

“Should you take someone with you?”

“No time.” He mounted his horse. “Tell some of the men to follow me.” Although he didn't truly think she would be able to convince Duke Wilhelm's men to go after a maidservant.

He followed the cart wheel tracks in the dirt, but they did not stay on the road. He dismounted, frantically searching the ground for any sign of them.

Several of Duke Wilhelm's guards stopped on the road where he had left Donner.

“I need a tracker over here,” Gerek yelled.

He recognized the first two men who reached him. “I lost the trail here. I'm tracking two women, a cart, a donkey, and possibly an ox. One woman is probably on the cart.”

The men went to work, touching the ground, sniffing bits of leaves and dirt. One called the other over and they consulted, then called out, “We found the trail.”

Gerek could just make out the cart wheel tracks in the grass. It looked as though they were following the road, but out of sight of it, in the edge of the trees. Gerek and the other men remounted their horses and followed the two trackers. They kept going for an hour or more before they lost the trail again. This time even the best trackers could not pick up any signs.

“Let's split up,” Gerek said. “Two men in every direction.”

Gerek took the best tracker with him, but eventually it was clear that they had completely lost the trail. The tracker held out little hope of finding it again. But they pressed on, hoping and praying to miraculously intercept their trail again or to even find the two women themselves.

They stopped midafternoon to rest their horses.

“Shouldn't we turn back?” the tracker asked. “We've been searching for hours and haven't found them.”

“Of course we shouldn't turn back! Turn back? For what?” Gerek took a slow, deep breath and fought to rid the anger from his tone. “Let us keep looking. We could find them at any moment.” But it was less and less likely as time wore on, and he knew it.

They finally found a road and a man with an ox and cart, carrying a load of thatch. Gerek asked the man if he had seen two women and a donkey cart.

“No, I haven't seen anyone like that, no women at all.”

Gerek was too disappointed to say another word. He could no longer convince his tracker to stay, so the man headed back to Hagenheim.

Gerek continued searching alone. He soon came to a small village and asked several people if they had seen two women with a donkey and a cart traveling that day. No one had seen them.

He went back the way he had come and tried to think at which point it was most likely that they had gone off a different way.

It was impossible. There was no way to know which direction Gothel had taken her. Along the way were fields and roads and woods, but where they had gone was a complete mystery.

He couldn't let despair overtake him. He had bought some food at the village and he stopped now to eat it, water his horse, and rest.

He couldn't stop thinking about her fighting off her attacker at the castle. Even though she had wanted to make it clear that Balthasar had attacked her, had fallen on her knife, she didn't collapse in hysterical crying or screaming at realizing the man was dead, as he might have expected a young woman to do. She had no one in her life except a mother who had threatened to do terrible things to her, but she was not overcome by her circumstances, not grasping and desperate to marry the first man she could cling to.

And yet . . . she was thoroughly feminine and beautiful and sweet.

He wouldn't even let himself think he might be in love with her. He was nearly betrothed to Lady Lankouwen, but she had said she would marry him if he was willing. Lady Lankouwen was the best thing for him—sedate, wealthy, and in need of a protector. He would be helping her, and with her money and her estate, which was as grand as the castle where he had been born, she would be helping him show his brother that even though Gerek was the younger son, he was just as worthy.

But what would happen to Rapunzel? If her mother was able to force her to take a sleeping potion and seize her, bearing her away against her will, what else might she do to her? The woman was obviously mad.

He stood and put away the food and interrupted Donner's grazing. They would search until nightfall, sleep in the woods, then search some more tomorrow. For as long as it took.