1st 5 Pages June Workshop - Santelli Rev 1

Name: Rebecca C K Santelli
Genre: YA Historical Mystery
Title: A Serpent in the Garden

A Serpent in the Garden, Chapter 1

Germany, June 1148

The sound of the abbey bells danced in the young woman's ears. Soon her troubles would be over. When she reached the abbey, she would find an advocate, a protector, someone who could force him to acknowledge his son. Her arms tightened around the baby nestled in her cloak.

Why didn't he love his child? Why didn't he love her? She loved him still. In her dreams, she saw his burning eyes, savored the saltiness of his lips, felt the weight of his body as they lay on his feather-soft cloak, the night curled around them like a raven's wing.

The baby cried out, piercing and plaintive. She sat down and offered him her breast. He nuzzled against her chest. His tiny fingers brushed her face. Her lips parted. Her breathing slowed. The baby drank himself back to sleep, his warm neck resting in the crook of her arm.

A whistle sounded in the distance. The young woman's head jerked up. She knew that tune, his favorite hunting tune. It coursed through her veins like ice water. How had he found her?

She struggled to her feet and ran, but only for a few seconds. She could not escape him that way. He would strike her down from behind; the baby would be thrown to the ground, his delicate skull broken.

She would reason with him. She would promise to run away. To go where nobody knew them. She would not endanger his prospects. She would not tell the child his name. But he would never believe her. Not now.

Tears streamed down her face. They would hide in the woods. A ridiculous notion. He was an expert hunter. He would find them. She could picture his knife slicing her baby's throat, feel the blood on her hands, taste the screams in her mouth.

She saw only one choice.

She hid her sleeping son near the side of the road. Tucking him into the sheltering ferns, she rehearsed what she would say. She would tell him the baby died. Her tears would convince him. And she would die quietly, so her son would not wake and cry out. She ran her trembling hands down his cheeks. Was she doing the right thing? Yes. She was on abbey lands. God would reward her sacrifice by keeping the child safe. She looked at him for the last time, burning his face into her memory.

The whistling drew closer. She walked back to meet it.

A Serpent in the Garden, Chapter 2

2 weeks earlier.

I sat bolt upright, clutching the bedclothes, the fur coverlet damp in my sweating palms. Had I dreamt of my mother again—of chasing her ghost through darkened labyrinths and ruined crypts? She died fifteen years ago, when I was only a babe. When would I outgrow these nightmares? Perhaps if someone told me what really happened to her, but that will never be. My uncle Baldric forbids it.

Unable to settle myself, I decided to go to the castle's chapel and pray for her soul. Being careful not to wake my cousin, Gisela, I drew aside the curtains and climbed out of bed. A cold wind whistled through the window, scraping against my bare body like a pumice stone. I pulled my gown down from its pole on the stone wall and dressed quickly.

Exiting the great hall, I saw the crenelated battlements of the south wall snapping at the sapphire blue sky. I shuddered, feeling like a mouse trapped in the jaws of a lion. My tutor, Father Gregory, would have reproached me for such ingratitude. Most ladies would count themselves lucky to have a guardian as wise and temperate as Baron Baldric, but I knew he kept me out of duty rather than love. And most ladies do not have to contend with an uncle as reckless and cruel as his brother, Baron Arnulf.

I crossed the courtyard and passed beneath the stone archway into the chapel garden. A statue of the Virgin Mary stood at the center. Normally I found her beautiful, but in the shadow of my nightmare, the gleaming white figure suggested a shrouded corpse. I forced myself to walk on, but I gave the statue a wide berth, keeping close to the curving wall of the bergfried, a defensive tower of the Hirschburg. I reminded myself that departed souls entered into heavenly bliss, eternal punishment, or the cleansing fires of purgatory. They did not linger on earth to torment the living. Then, as if in direct challenge to my thoughts, a ghostly voice cried out. “Judge thou, O Lord, them that wrong me. Overthrow them that fight against me. Take hold of arms and shield, and rise up to help me.”

I looked at the bergfried. Was the soul of a long-dead warrior crying out for vengeance? I crossed myself quickly. The ghostly voice coughed. “Ghosts cannot catch chill,” I whispered. I scolded myself for being so childish. Clearly a flesh and blood human being was crying out to God for help, but who could be trapped in the bergfried?

A massive apple tree stood in the garden; its uppermost branches brushing the arrow slits on the second story of the bergfried. As a child, I clambered through those branches like a squirrel, but I had not braved them in three years.

The voice cried out again. “Say to my soul: I am thy salvation.” He sounded so desperate, I had to know who he was.

I seized the lowest branch of the apple tree. Three years of extra weight stretched the muscles in my arms. I took a deep breath and kicked my feet upwards. The rough bark gnawed at my fingers. My fashionable trumpet sleeves and voluminous skirts fought against me. But slowly and surely I ascended. At last I reached the two highest branches. Suspended between them, I peered into the nearest arrow slit.

A reassuringly mortal form huddled in the corner. He wore a dark robe, and on the top of his head a bare patch of skin shone slightly in the darkness. Why, it was a tonsure—and the robe that of a monk.

“Good Brother,” I called, “good Brother—”

“Good heavens!” The monk sprang up and rushed to arrow slit. “Are you an angel come to rescue me from me captors?”

So he was a captive. Surely this was the work of Baron Arnulf. He constantly accuses the monks at the nearby abbey of plotting to overthrow the Barons von Hirschburg, but the truth is Arnulf lusts after the abbey lands.

“No. Only a lady hanging in an apple tree, but I will help you if I can. How came you to this place?”

“I hardly know myself. It happened so quickly. Brother Rudolfus and I were in the forest collecting firewood, and we became separated. I heard a noise and, thinking it was Rudolfus, I called out. Then four men burst through the trees with swords drawn. They bound me and gagged me and dragged me away!”

“Was there a man among them with a great gray beard, bald as a vulture, with half his teeth black as cherry pits?”

“Indeed. A huge, hulking bear of a man with his stomach hanging halfway to his knees.”

“Arnulf! I knew it.”

“If I did wrong, I will gladly make amends.”