1st 5 Pages June Workshop - Santelli - Rev 2

A Serpent in the Garden, Chapter 1

Germany, June 1148

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

She lost her heart at fifteen, when he followed her into the churchyard and, with burning eyes, demanded a kiss. Two years later, despite everything, she loved him still. In her dreams, she savored the saltiness of his lips and felt the weight of his body as they lay on his cloak, the night curled around them like a raven's wing.

The baby cried out, hungry again. She sat and offered him her breast. He nuzzled against her chest. His 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 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. 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.

Early one morning, before the rest of the castle woke, I went to the chapel to pray for my mother's soul. She died fifteen years ago, when I was only a babe, but I never neglected this ritual. No-one else prayed for her. No-one else spoke of her. My uncle Baldric forbade it.

Darkness filled the room, intensifying the smell of incense and the aching in my legs as I knelt on the stone floor. I recited the De Profundis, the Misere, and the Requiem Aeternam. Then I stood and walked out to the chapel garden.

On my right loomed the bergfried, a defensive tower and, in times gone by, a holding place for prisoners. On my left, the crenelated battlements of the south wall snapped at the sapphire 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 walked toward the stone archway that lead to the main courtyard. Suddenly, 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.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I looked at the bergfried. Was the soul of a long-dead prisoner demanding vengeance? I crossed myself quickly. The 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. Rough bark gnawed at my fingers. Trumpet sleeves and voluminous skirts fought against me. But slowly 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. 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.

“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?”

“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 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.”

I paused. That Arnulf had kidnapped a man of God was appalling enough, but in so doing he put the entire household in danger. The powerful protectors of the abbey might respond with violence. Should I go directly to Baron Baldric? He would surely object to this abduction, but would he jeopardize his tenuous alliance with Arnulf by open dissent? Perhaps it would be best if the monk simply escaped, vanished like the morning mists that wreathed the Hirschburg.

“I will get you out, Brother.”

“But how—”

“Trust me.”