The Tangled Web(34)

The lawyer nodded to the end of the line. "Paul says . . ."

The little artist spoke up. "Felix Gruyard is in town. Or was. I saw him. He came to services at Saint Severi. I don't go out in the congregation, of course. I watch from the sacristy, so he did not see me."

"Who is Felix Gruyard?" Andrea frowned. Something, right on the edge of her memory. Something to do with that obscene pamphlet. A Lorrainer.

The little artist lifted up his loose tunic. The school teacher pointed to his legs.

"He is the archbishop of Cologne's torturer," the speech writer said. "He is very good at what he does."

The artist dropped his tunic. He held out his hands and arms, unscarred. "He is very careful in his work. The archbishop still wanted me to be able to paint, you see. Even though I am a Calvinist."

Buchenland, August 1634

"That went pretty smoothly," Geraldin said. They had the abbot of Fulda neatly trussed up and loaded on a small hay cart. Pretty fair hay, too.

"What about the other one?" MacDonald asked.

"Leave him down there. He's not going to be moving. Get back to where you were supposed to meet the boss. Shots attract attention and you don't want blood all over your clothes if you pass other people between here and there. I'm on my way."

MacDonald shrugged and headed back to meet Butler and Deveroux at von Berlepsch's.



Wes Jenkins had finally dealt with the way he couldn't help worrying about Clara Bachmeierin whenever she was out in the field by assigning her to ride with him while they tried to pacify the farmers. That way, he figured, he would only have to worry about her when it was absolutely necessary. That would help him keep his mind on other things, such as the importance of believing that railroad surveyors are your friends.

Most of the farmers had a lot of trouble grasping even the basics of that idea. So did Wes, for that matter. He'd read a book once about some of those early railroad barons, back in American history. He expected that his spiel wasn't as convincing as it might have been.

There were getting to be a lot of Brillo pamphlets and poems and songs around. Clara thought they were funny. Wes didn't think they were particularly funny. Oh, a couple of them were cute enough, but not anything that you could compare to Peanuts. Peanuts had always been his favorite comic strip. Once, Reverend Jones, Mary Ellen, that was, had taken the adult Sunday school class through a book called The Gospel According to Peanuts. That had been pretty good. He wondered if Clara would like it.

About that time, someone jumped into the pony cart and hit him from behind, rather hard. The horse reared. Men started yelling. They pulled him out of the cart. Three of them were on him, tying up various pieces of his body to other pieces.

"Leave his legs free," someone said. "We have to move them." Two men sat on him, one on each leg.

Clara was yelling, too, until someone shoved a rag in her mouth.

A man behind him was trying to get a blindfold on his eyes. He kept tossing his head up and down. He kept thinking that von Schlitz's sons had tried to blame the attack on the wagon going to Grantville on bandits. If so, it had been the only batch of bandits on that road in the last year and a half. Like this one. This was a perfectly safe road. He wiggled his head away from the blindfold again. That was von Schlitz's son. The older one. Fritz.

"Hold still," someone said. "Hold still or I cut her."

Wes looked up. A couple of men were holding Clara's arms. Another man was holding a wicked-looking knife right against her cheek, smiling sweetly.

He let them put the blindfold on.

It was hard to tell how long it took to get where they were going. The path, if he could trust the feel of the horse under him, had more curves than the climb to Pike's Peak.

He'd gone to Pike's Peak with Lena and the girls, once. They had tried to hit all of the important national parks on family vacations. He wondered what Lena was doing now. Whatever it is, Lena, God bless you. He said goodbye to his wife.

Nobody was talking except the man who had smiled as he held the knife against Clara's cheek. He seemed to find it entertaining to describe the things he planned to do to them if they did not answer the questions they would be asked.



The sound behind them was probably a door closing. Wes thought that it made a depressingly solid sound. A well-built door, probably. Reinforced panels and a good latch. Where was planned obsolescence when you really needed it?

"They pulled out my gag," Clara was saying, "If you come over here and sit on the floor so that your head is about the height of my hands, I will try to untie your blindfold. That is the best place to start, I think. He put on yours before he put on mine. It is just rough hempcloth, so the knot can't be too tight. He didn't bother to dampen it."