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Lady Graves, my NaNoWriMo novel in progress

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3-Nov-2018

CHAPTER THREE

Fritz Lanza appeared at last.

He was a sturdy, hardworking lad of seventeen and just what Stangler needed, someone to assist him on a quest he could not undertake. First, the firewood, milk, eggs, and various chores.

“I have a mysterious patient inside,” Stangler told him as they worked. He described the shallow grave, the injuries, and the lady’s amnesia. “Have you heard any gossip about a missing lady, or servant girl, or any young woman?”

Fritz had not, but he had not been in town for some time.

“I’m in a quandary about her. I should like to inquire at the inn as to any travelers from England passing through. And I should notify the constables of an attempted murder. But I’ve not been free to leave my patient alone and unattended.”

“If someone meant for her to be dead and buried,” Fritz said, “and word gets out that she is yet alive, that someone might come back and finish the job.”

“Ach, ja. Du hast Recht. Quite right, Fritz.” Stangler smiled his approval at the young man who was capable of so much more than being a farmhand. “If you are at liberty, I should like to hire you for a fact-finding mission. Travel to more than one village, if need be.”

“I’m sure my younger brothers would fight for my chores and the wages they bring.”

“Sehr gut. This lady, now, is still a bit of a fright to behold. You'd best not look. Her face is swollen, though not so hideous as before. She’s beginning to look more like a human than a lioness. Her own mother likely wouldn’t recognize her, but for a wild mane of long, rippling, red-gold hair.”

“She sounds divine,” Fritz said, laughing.

“Um sicher zu sein.” Stangler frowned. “In time, she will be, I’m sure.”

He didn’t like the idea of the tall, handsome, bright, upright, and young Fritz Lanza sharing his high regard for the forlorn maiden who occupied his bed. If indeed “Lady Graves” was a noblewoman, the farm lad stood no chance of winning her attentions.

Seeing Fritz off on his journey to town put his mind at ease. His heart, however, was troubled. Someone was sure to know this woman and claim her

And when she was fully recovered, Stangler would have no more reason for her to remain in his care.

Paul Detlefson painting source

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Lady Graves awoke with both eyes open

and breathed in the glorious air of spring. Through the open window she saw the first golden-green ruffles adorning the woods, the first violets and dandelions dotting the pasture outside the door, the nanny goat gamboling in the misty morning light, and Herr Doktor schlepping a bucket of milk to the cottage door.

Since the middle of March--how did she recall this?-- the light had been richer and nearer, each day perceptibly longer, each twilight more vivid, as if the sun-god devoted more time and artistry now to this side of the globe. April must have arrived, she knew without recalling where she had spent all her other Aprils--nor how many Aprils she had passed. One and twenty, ein und zwansig? Herr Doktor guessed her to be no younger than nineteen, no older than twenty-one.

She wore a clean linen shift and not much else. Her state of undress was scandalous, but comfortable, and by the time she grasped the shocking fact that a man saw her every day in this state, it was too late for decorum. The prospect of petticoats, ribbons, polonaise puffs, straight pins and stomachers horrified her now and seemed a prison to be escaped with great pleasure.

“Lady Graves,” she said to herself. “Herr Doktor. Klaus. Who is this man? How am I to know he isn’t hiding me here for his own dark purpose?”

Even Emil, dear little Emil, seemed to have sinister motives. He dropping in her lap a disgusting object made of leather, wet with his slobber, the size of a large apple.

“Ach, you have found favor with Emil,” the doctor said. “He brings you his Kostbarkeit.”

“His what?”

“His most treasured object, the ball I fashioned for him of leather and beans. Warte bis du siehst! Come outside and see. No mission in life is more urgent to him than the throwing of this ball high into the air, and his leaping up to catch it.”

Draped in a blanket, she walked out the door of the stone cottage and settled onto a wooden bench. Seeing Emil at play made her laugh so hard, her ribs ached. To leap so high, so easily, so often, so tirelessly! Would that she had even an iota of his energy and good health!

Days and nights merged without her keeping track of them. She could stand and walk around now and feed herself at the table. She felt well enough to gather eggs, help with cooking and dishes, and go into the woods with Herr Doktor, gathering roots and nuts for his little ”Apotheke,” his pharmacy.

She sat with him at table, sorting and labeling jars, boxes, and leather pouches. “You have abducted me,” she teased, “as your indentured servant. Do I look like an apothecary?”

“Unsinn! Nonsense. Your face is still green with bruises and you’re dressed in a man’s breaches and cloak, looking like a sad, sorry little lion-boy.” He ducked as she swatted at him. “Also, you are much too stubborn and intractable to serve anyone. But as you’ve yet to recover your given name, my dear Lady Graves, I take pity on you, and keep you occupied lest you start feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I feel sorry for you, living this quiet life of desperation.”

“You love it,” he said. “There is never time enough to read all the books I collect, especially when the woods beckon. People are just a distraction.”

She thought she remembered thinking such things but from him it sounded rather heartless. She really did love delving into the woods, “no place for a lady,” she recalled with clarity yet with no memory of who said it. How long would this go on, this agony of not knowing? Her memory broken and out of reach.

“I don’t understand,” she said, sniffing the remarkable lavender and chamomile tea he brewed. “I remember names and words, like ‘Hund,’ dog, doctor, table, chair, and tea. ‘Eine Tasse Tee,’ as you say. I am a lady, not a serving wench. I remember that I love wine and cheese but hate sauerkraut, and that it would be impertinent to address you as Klaus. My head must be working, however broken it may be.”

“Sauerkraut is good for you. Your recovery would be greatly enhanced, I am sure, if you would but cease this irrational bias against--”

“Fermented cabbage! It reeks! And your pickled beets might extend my life by fifty years, but eating them makes me want to die.”

“Ketzerei! You wound me, mein Schatz. Ach, you are a heretic. ”

“No, I am an English lady, and you are a mad German living in utter isolation without a servant or anyone but a crazy dog for a companion. You have yet to persuade me I am not a captive, drugged and held here for some nefarious purpose of your own.”

Emil, standing with his front paws on her lap, pressed his forehead to her breast. She smiled and stroked his good ear.

“My actions speak for themselves,” Stangler said with a cool, hard, quiet tone. Emil bounded to his side as if to vouch for him.

She sighed, gripping her braid and rotating it in the light, as if the glinting reds and gold would tell her something.

For now, it was a good time to read. Her most surprising find on the doctor's bookshelf had to be the journals of Lewis and Clark, with the illustrations and tales of wonder in a strange land across the ocean. Herr Doktor had read a great deal about the New World and founding fathers and seem quite captivated by the Declaration of Independence, but it wasn’t his countrymen who died in the Revolutionary War.

At the window, two cats appeared each morning when the goat was due to be milked. The black and white, Henri, looked like a well dressed Frenchman, while Siegfried could be mistaken for a raccoon. He was a giant of a cat, with the softest bird chirp of a meow.

“Siegfried,” she addressed the furball staring through the window, “suchst du nach Kriemhild?”

The doktor gave a start. “You speak German now! How do you know of Kriemhild?”

“I don’t know; the words just appeared in my mind.” She thought a bit, then recited in German: “In Burgundy there flourished a maid so fair to see that in all the world a fairer could not be. This maiden’s name was Kriemhild. Matchless was her person, matchless was her mind, gracing all of womankind.”

He clapped his hands together, laughing. “Wunderbar! You missed a few words, but that was lovely. How came you to read the Nibelungenlied?”

It was her turn to laugh. “That, I don’t recall, but I have a peculiar conviction that I was betrothed to a German prince in part because I knew a little German.”

“I once knew a little German. He tried to kill me, but I got away.” He couldn’t stop laughing for a minute, then shook his head. “Marry a German prince. Heaven forbid. You’d do better to elope with an American and conquer the wilderness.”

His teased her with visions Lady Graves in the New World and tall tales of the men who’d woo here there. Laughter transformed him. Had she ever laughed so much in all her life?

Seeing him climb the stairs to sleep in the loft as the candle burned low, she wanted to cry out as if in pain to keep him at her side all night. Indeed, it was hard not to whimper in self-pity as he left her alone in his bed.

Emil would do. All his bouncing by day turned him into a nice, warm, inert mass of fur by night, and she did not look forward to the day she would have to leave.

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Felix Posser painting source

CHAPTER FOUR

At last, another human came knocking

on a day when Lady Grave was feeling fine--and ready to escape the confines of the stone cottage in the clearing in the woods.

The visitor was tall and broad, blue-eyed and blond, sturdy and young--so young!--compared the good doctor, who must be past the age of thirty, with crinkling eyes and an ancient sadness in his green eyes.

"Lady Graves," the doctor said, "allow me to introduce you to Fritz Lanza. I have employed him to make inquiries in town about any missing ladies."

"Löwendame," said Lanza with a bow. Lion Lady? He seemed to catch himself. “Dame vom Grab.”

Lady of the Grave. Close enough. The man's eyes sparkled, his cheeks were ruddy with good health, and no subtle air of eternal sadness haunted his handsome, youthful face.

She curtsied and greeted Herr Lanza in English, though she understood far more German than she could have picked up from the doctor in her short stay with him. Lion Lady, indeed!

"You see, I am not a complete isolationist," Herr Doktor said to her while motioning Lanza to a chair at the table, pouring him some tea. "Here is a Mensch who can assure you I am a healer, not a captor."

"If he professes to like your sauerkraut, nothing he says will have any credulity," she replied.

They exchanged friendly insults and pleasantries until the doctor looked ready to burst. "Fritz, I can bear the wait no longer. What news do you bring?"

The young man held her gaze first, then the doctor's. "Two towns, two tales," he said. "Rather than tell you things in the order I learned them, let me put the events in order."

At the first inn, a carriage stopped with an English lady, her maid, her maid's mother, and the driver.

"At the next inn," he said, "an English lady and her mother arrived in a panic--with the mother driving the carriage. Their maid had run off with their driver. And so we have not one missing person, but two."

A dark and ponderous silence weighed upon her.

"It was a maid's garments you were wearing when I found you," said the doctor. "You speak like a lady, yet you have no proof other than your own refined and gracious manners."

"No." She stood, shaking her head. A jagged knife in her heart stole her breath. She gasped for air.

Emil leaped from his familiar position at the doctor's feet and stood guard beside her.

"I am no maid, and I never ran away with some coachman." Her head pounded, matching the hurt in her heart. "You are not harboring some criminal, Herr Klaus, Herr Doktor, whoever you are. You're the one in some sort of exile in this cottage in the woods. You're no more credible, no more able to prove our honor, than--"

Again, she had to catch her breath.

Young Lanza's eyes darted as he cast his bright blue gaze from one the other. Emil pricked up his ears and gave a soft, wary woof of concern.

"I am the lady, not the maid," she said. "And I was on my way to Lindenstein to marry a prince."

From the laughter young Lanza could not fully suppress, she knew what a daunting quest it would be to prove her claim.

She still couldn't remember her own name.

4-Nov-2018

Painting "Prague Old Town Square" by Yuriy Shevchuksource

“A prince,”

Herr Doktor said. “This is rich! I wonder what his name might be.”

She frowned at Lanza’s ill-concealed smirk, then met the doctor’s gaze. “You have never given me your full name and title. I should wonder what your name might be.”

Lanza quirked an eyebrow at him.

Casting his gaze from the farmhand to the forlorn maiden, he finally replied. “Stangler. My real name is Stangler. I am Herr Doktor Niklaus Stangler, late of Berlin, and you are not at liberty to share this with anyone else.”

“Stangler.” She studied his green eyes with the long, dark lashes. “Are you a fugitive from the law?”

“I am a fugitive from ignorance and tyranny. Never mind the charges against me; they are absurd and indicative of the sad, sorry state of a nation.”

Lanza laughed.

“A coachman and a maid have gone missing,” Stangler said. “We have accounted for the missing maid--”

She cleared her throat, and he shrugged. “This coachman, now. We need to locate him.” He turned his gaze to Lanza. “Did you get a name, a description, of this alleged deserter?”

“The innkeeper had to be fed with coins for every tidbit he gave me in return,” Lanza said. “The coach had glass windows and a door on each side. It could seat four people, in pairs facing each other, and the coachman, driving the horses, would sit above the front wheels.”

Stangler sighed. It was just like the farmhand to take more interest in the means of transport than the people being transported.

“Did you perchance get names for the two women who reported a missing coachman and a missing maid?”

“Lady Evelyn was the damsel in distress who’d lost her driver and her maid. The maid’s mother, nobody bothered with her name.”

Lady Evelyn.

Lady Evelyn.

The woman dressed only in a shift in the company of two men took in a deep breath and held it. What mean estate had she fallen to?

Her heart raced. A hammer pounded inside her head, and her hand flew to the gash in her scalp, now a ridge of hardened skin, Dr. Stangler having recently removed the stitches.

“Did you get the name of the missing maid?” Stangler asked.

“The maid was called Vee.”

“Vee," she said. "Short for Victoria.”

How did she know this?

“My name is not Victoria!” she cried out as both men stared at her.

“I suppose,” Stangler said, “you prefer the sound of Lady Evelyn?”

“I don’t know!” Her head pounded even harder and her chest was so tight, she could scarcely get air into her lungs.

Stangler rose so quickly, his chair toppled as he raced around the table. He scooted her around to face him. “Put your head between your knees, Lady Evelyn.” He had to guide her head down. “ Relax your muscles. Take deep breaths, hold them, and let them out slowly as if blowing out a candle.”

The most terrifying thing she had ever known was being unable to take a breath. She shot up, once again butting heads with the doctor as she did so. He winced but didn’t exclaim over the collision.

Stangler clapped a hand on her back, eliciting a sharp intake of air.

A soft, low cry formed somewhere near her heart and squeezed through her throat, turning into a crescendo of a wail, prolonged and terrible.

Instead of forcing her head between her knees again, Stangler pulled her into his arms and rocked her like a baby against his shoulder. “There, now,” he soothed her. “Dir geht es gut. You are well. You shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

She had a name.

Her name was Lady Evelyn; it had to be so. She knew Vee was for Victoria.

Beyond that, she remembered nothing.

END OF DAY FOUR