MB02 - A Noble Groom (4 page)

Matthias was freeing him.

“What about the guard?”

“He’s been called home for a family emergency.” Matthias twisted the key, and it scraped in protest as if hesitant to release its captive. “His sheep have all escaped from the pen.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“These kinds of accidents have been known to happen on occasion.” The older man’s voice carried the hint of humor Carl loved.

He grinned. But just as quickly the grin dissipated. “If you free me, what shall I do, Matthias? Where shall I go?”

The lock on the cell door finally clicked. Matthias swung it open, and the squealing of the rusty hinges was loud enough to raise the bones of the skeletons buried beneath the floor.

“When the duke finds out about my escape, he’ll put a price on my head. I won’t be safe anywhere on the Continent.”

Matthias cast a glance over his shoulder, then put a finger to his lips. “Let’s go. We will talk as we walk.”

Carl didn’t resist when the older man motioned him forward. He had nothing to gather from the cell. He left as he’d entered, with only the clothes he wore—albeit they were much degraded from their original condition, rumpled and filthy with the stench of prison ingrained into every fiber.

Instead of leading him down the corridor toward the entrance of the dungeon, Matthias ushered him in the opposite direction. “The servant assigned to replace the guard became stuck in the wardrobe,” Matthias whispered.

“Stuck?” Another grin tugged at Carl’s lips.

“Quite stuck.”

He could only imagine. He had no doubt Matthias had plied the servant well ahead of time with enough beer to make it impossible for the man to remain at his post.

“The troublesome door won’t hold him but a few minutes.”

Carl ducked under a low beam, spider webs catching in the scruff that covered his normally clean-shaven face. “Since we’re headed away from the door, I’m suspecting there’s another way out of this place that I don’t know about.”

“I always knew you were a bright boy.”

When they reached the end wall of the dungeon with an empty cell on either side, they stopped. The dim light from the lone oil lamp hardly touched them.

Matthias moved toward a coffin leaning against the wall. The medieval casket was covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.

His servant made a weak attempt to lift it away from the wall.

“Let me help.” Carl stepped forward, gripped the cold stone, and strained to lift it. “I’d like to use the excuse that my body is weak from the lack of activity these past weeks, but you know as well as I do that I’m not an overly strong man.”

Compared to the miners who swung their hammers in caverns deep in the earth, and the peasant farmers who labored in the fields, he was weak and thin. But he was after all a nobleman’s son and a scientist and had no need for the strength of the common man.

He grunted, moving the coffin only a fraction. “What’s in this thing anyway?”

“A stone statue of the Virgin Mother.” Matthias slid his hand along the wall behind the coffin as if searching for something.

Carl wished he had time to pull off the lid and examine the
statue. But now was neither the time nor place for an art and history lesson.

“There it is.” The older man pulled out a key, dropped to his knees, and began counting the stones on the wall. He pried several before one finally budged. “Seventh from the cell door, just as he said.”

“Who’s
he
?”

“Your father.” Matthias wiggled the stone, and it scraped against the floorboards, revealing a secret keyhole.

“What does my father have to do with this?”

“I wouldn’t know any of these secrets if not for your father.” Matthias jabbed in the key and struggled to turn it. Suddenly a creak rent the air and the floorboards cracked open.

Carl knelt next to Matthias, and together they wrenched the boards apart, revealing a hanging trapdoor.

A waft of dank, cold air greeted them.

“This is incredible.” Carl peered down into the black pit. He tried to examine the pulley that had lowered the door, but he couldn’t make out anything in the darkness of the corridor. “Whoever made this secret door was a genius.”

“Your father said it’s been here for generations.” Matthias had removed the key and was already shoving the stone back into the wall. “It was an escape route during times when the castle came under siege.”

“Why didn’t I ever know about this?”

“No one knew except your father.”

“And you.”

“Not until last night.”

Carl’s pulse clattered to a halt. So Matthias wasn’t orchestrating the escape by himself. Was his father involved too?

Matthias stood.

Carl stared up at him through the faint light.

“You’re his only child. He may not show his love very often, but deep in his heart he doesn’t want to see you die, criminal or not.”

“I hope you know I didn’t do what they’re accusing me of—”

Matthias cut off his words with a wave of his hand. “Even though trouble seems to follow you wherever you go, I know you’re a good man.”

Gratitude swelled in Carl’s throat. “Thank you, Matthias.”

“We don’t have time for sentiments now.” The servant cast a furtive glance over his shoulder toward the other end of the dungeon. Then he nodded at the hole in the floorboards. “We need to keep moving.”

Carl climbed into the pit first. After a descent of approximately two fathoms, his feet touched the hard earth. The blackness of the cavern threatened to swallow him.

In a matter of minutes, Matthias had closed the hatch, blocking out every trace of light. Carl would have believed himself trapped and alone except for the groan of the ladder and the scrape of Matthias’s boots as he descended.

Matthias’s huffing breath finally brushed Carl’s cheek. There was a moment of scratching and the scent of red phosphorus, then a tiny flame danced to life.

The flicker from the long match lit the narrow chamber and revealed a torch on the wall. Matthias wasted no time in lighting it and leading the way into a tunnel.

“Let’s pray there are no collapses in the wall or ceiling.” Matthias stooped low.

Carl’s back grazed the top of the tunnel, and he had to arch his neck at an awkward angle to see Matthias. “I take it my father hasn’t been down here in a while?”

“There haven’t been too many sieges recently.”

The wryness of Matthias’s tone brought a sense of renewed
calm to Carl’s spirit. “True.” He inhaled a deep breath of the earthiness of wet soil.

“So where am I going?”

“America.”

Carl stumbled to a halt. “You cannot be serious.”

“Very.”

America was a place for homeless serfs, unhappy peasants, and discontent miners. He’d heard his father tell more than one of his employees who’d come to him with complaints over wages or working conditions, “If you don’t like it, go to America.”

That distant country an ocean away was not a place for a nobleman like him.

“I couldn’t possibly go there.”

Matthias stopped, and his eyes censured him. “What? You’re too good for America?”

“There must be a place more suitable to my status.”

“Well, now you’re penniless and homeless.” Matthias started forward. “So you’ll fit right in.”

“What about England?” Maybe he could find another position as a tutor. Or a professor at one of the universities.

“And if Lord Faust hears of your return?”

Carl sighed. If his former employer, Lord Faust, discovered he’d stepped foot into England, the man would track him down and put a bullet in his heart. Lord Faust wanted him dead just as much as the duke did.

“So there’s no other place?” He scrambled after Matthias.

“No.”

For a moment they trudged in silence, the steady drip of runoff water echoing with their footsteps. The light of the torch illuminated the winding tunnel, aiding their navigation through the roots and stones. The damp chill penetrated Carl’s coat,
and he tried to shake off the depressing thought of having to leave his homeland.

He should be grateful. The Lord had graciously answered his prayers and decided to spare his life. He would get to keep his head on his body—if he made it out of the tunnel and the castle without being caught.

But America? Could he really go there? It was so far away. So foreign. A place for poor dissidents. Besides, where would he live?

“You’ll go to live with my brother,” Matthias said as if he’d overheard Carl’s thoughts.

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

Matthias snorted.

And its echo in the tunnel confronted Carl and made him stumble with shame. How much did he know about the personal life of this faithful servant who’d been a part of his father’s household for more years than Carl had lived?

Apparently not much.

“I received a letter from my brother two days ago. He wants me to send him a groom for one of his widowed daughters.”

“Wait a minute!” Carl straightened and bumped his head against the rocky soil of the ceiling, sending a shower of dirt down upon himself. “If I must go to America, then so be it. But I won’t marry a complete stranger as part of the deal.”

Matthias stopped and turned. The torchlight cast long, eerie shadows over the walls and turned his servant’s face into that of a ghoul. “Of course you won’t marry my niece.” His voice was hard, and the glimmer in his eyes pierced Carl with a strange shaft of guilt.

Certainly Matthias knew he couldn’t marry a woman who wasn’t of noble birth.

“I’m sure your niece is a nice enough girl.” For a peasant.

The unspoken words hung between them.

“Besides,” Carl spoke quickly, “I won’t marry someone I don’t know or love.”

Suddenly the image of Barbara came to mind, the baroness his father had been pressuring him to marry. She was every bit as noble and rich as he was, but that was about as much as they had in common and ever would.

He refused to consider putting a woman through an arranged marriage—like his parents’. He had witnessed firsthand what a loveless relationship had done to his mother. And he’d vowed he would never make a woman as miserable as she’d been.

“Well, then that’s good.” Matthias resumed his stoop-shouldered motion forward. “Because I wasn’t asking you to marry my niece.”

“Oh.” Carl started after his servant. “If you don’t want me to marry her, what do you want me to do with her?”

“I have already spoken to one of my cousin’s sons, Dirk, who has been saving to travel to America. And he has eagerly agreed to step in as my niece’s husband.”

“Good for him.”

“Yes, it’s a good opportunity for a man like him to go to America and inherit a forty-acre farm.” Matthias stretched the torch out in front as if trying to see the end of the tunnel. “He’s very excited about the possibility.”

“Excited about the farm or the marriage?” Carl couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his question.

“Some people don’t have the luxury of being so choosey about whom they marry.” Matthias’s voice was equally sarcastic.

Guilt pricked Carl again. In many principalities, the nobility still had the authority to permit or deny marriages among
the farmhands and rural workers who resided on their lands. Serfdom might have been abolished, but the ancient laws were not so easily eliminated.

“Dirk will have a better life in America,” Matthias added, “but he can’t go until he finishes earning the rest of the money he needs for the ship fare.”

“How long will that take?”

Matthias shrugged. “Perhaps another month or two—if I’m able to help him.”

“Maybe I can help too.”

“What will you give him? Your dirty lice-ridden clothes?”

“I have a purse of money in my chambers—”

“Not anymore.” Matthias stopped abruptly, and Carl had to catch himself to keep from barreling into the servant. “The duke sent some of his servants to your rooms and sequestered all of your belongings.”

Carl could only shake his head at the injustice. How was he to survive without his overflowing purse?

The flickering light of the torch revealed a wooden door, barred from the inside and locked with a chain.

Matthias handed Carl the torch, then pulled out the same key he’d retrieved from the false compartment in the coffin. He wiggled it into the rusty lock on the chain and labored to free the door of its barriers. Finally he shoved his shoulder against the planks and opened it a crack.

He peered outside and then pinned Carl with his most serious look. “You’re to travel to America to my brother in Michigan. And you’ll offer to help my niece until Dirk arrives.”

Unease gurgled in Carl’s stomach. “But I’m a scientist—”

“Not anymore.” Matthias’s expression turned grave. “You’re no longer Gottfried Charles von Reichart. From the moment you step out of this tunnel, you’re Carl Richards, a poor schoolteacher
unjustly accused of a crime against a duke, which you did not commit.”

Matthias pressed a letter into Carl’s hand. “Give this to my brother.”

Carl took the letter hesitantly. “I cannot live a lie.”

“It’s mostly true. Besides, it’s only a disguise to keep you safe.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.”

“I’m never to come back?” But even as Carl said the words, he knew that as long as the duke lived, he wouldn’t be safe in his homeland.

“In time, when the duke’s anger has subsided and he stops looking for you, maybe you’ll be able to go to a big American city and find work. I’ve heard there are many jobs. But until then, you’ll be safe with my brother.”

Carl fingered the letter. He didn’t like a single detail of the escape plan. But what could he do? Where else could he go?

Matthias shoved a small leather pouch against him.

The heaviness of the bag and the hard round lumps attested to money.

“Your father’s given you enough to pay for the cost of your travels. But that’s it. From now on, no more allowance.”

Carl shifted the pouch, jangling the coins, trying to get an idea of how much it contained. It was a mere pittance compared to what he was accustomed to having. “How heroic of him to be so generous.”

“If a large sum ended up missing from the baron’s coffers, the duke would hear of it, and it would raise his suspicion. And if your father sends you money in America, the duke will hear of that too. As it is, we’ll already incur a great deal of suspicion once he learns of your disappearance.”