Day 389: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: excuses

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Lady Graves is my NaNoWriMo novel in progress.

13-Nov-2018
Chapter 13-ish

The journey to Lindenstein began

with a side trip in the opposite direction, to the inn where the English patient had spent her last night as Lady Evelyn. “A trial run,” Stangler said, “close to home, as it were, so if you bungle it, we can return here and rethink our strategy.”

“Your vote of confidence goes to my head,” she said wryly.

He had her dressed in menswear because passing her off as an adolescent boy seemed the safest disguise. “In Shakespeare’s time,” he said, “boy actors played the female roles. Women did not start acting publicly in English theaters until the 1660s. I imagine you could just as easily play a boy. The trick is to mark how you stand and walk and what sort of words you’d say as a boy but not as a lady. Perhaps we should have you play a mute, deaf and dumb.”

“Ha! Or you could dress as a lady who’s deaf and dumb. If Herr Lanza’s height and impressive physique run in the family, his sisters might very well outsize a diminutive man like you.”

“Diminutive! More heresy,” he protested.

“You’re the heretic. It says in the Bible, in Deuteronomy, that it is a sin to wear clothes belonging to the other gender. I’ve seen pamphlets that speak out against male and female cross-dressing as monstrous and unnatural.”

“Oh, you mean the same Bible that tells men not to shave their beards? How monstrous of me.” He stroked his own clean-shaven face, which she greatly preferred to whiskers and mustaches.

The oddity known as Emil,

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with his funny bearded face,

was not allowed to join the adventure. A bouncing one-eyed dog would attract attention and make them unforgettable wherever they might go. Leaving him with the Lanzas, Stangler donned a hat tipped down to shield his eyes and a coat borrowed from a younger, smaller Lanza boy.

To save time they rode Stangler’s horse Etzel, a Friesian he boarded with the Lanzas. The stallion was gorgeous with his long, curly black mane and feathery fetlocks. Stangler mounted first, then helped Lady Graves up.

She'd ridden before, alone, on faster horses. This was entirely different, with a man at her back holding her loosely in his arms. She would go anywhere, all the way to America with him, just for an excuse to keep riding in what felt like a prolonged embrace.

They rode a path through the woods for several miles, then had to dismount and hide Etzel in the trees because nothing would raise suspicion like that fine horse in the hands of a dusty merchant and his boy.

“And here it is.” Stangler stopped walking as the inn came into view. The old brick two-story had a slate roof and narrow upstairs windows, a stable, and assorted guests getting into their coaches. "Your walk down memory lane begin."

Lady Graves held still, taking it all in. She had arrived in the evening, only a few weeks before, in darkness. Nothing tripped her memory. Indeed, the touch of Stangler’s hand at her back kept her fully engaged in the present. She lost all desire to revisit the place she had last been seen alive as Lady Evelyn of England.

With a gentle nudge, however, Stangler jolted her forward.

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Inside, the midday repast was being cleared away,

and stragglers lingered over their ale. A plump blonde wiped down tables, and a leering man gave his glass a deliberate shake, spilling ale on the floor. She bent over with her rag, her ample bosom in full view of the lecher.

An unpleasant memory sprang to mind. “I remember,” she whispered. “Being stared at by men with rotten teeth and dirty hands. It was my greatest incentive not to run about unescorted.”

Stangler greeted the innkeeper and ordered a dark ale for him, a spiced cider for her. “The lad can’t hold his liquor,” Stangler said. “He’ll be under the table in no time, and we have a long road ahead.” The innkeeper barely grunted a reply before ducking into the kitchen, but the barmaid sashayed over with their drinks.

Stangler made small talk with her, leading into the subject of English ladies lodging at this inn.

“You are in a historic position here,” he said. “This is the last place where anyone saw The Lady Evelyn depart in her fine carriage with her maid, her cook, and her coachman. Later that day, they met with quite an adventure. The coachman, it seems, had run off with the lady’s maid. The cook was tasked with driving the carriage, and the two women were desperate to find replacements. You must remember them?”

“Oh yes.” The barmaid flushed, bright-eyed and speaking eagerly. “The lady was quite full of herself. Sending back her wine glass three times before it came back clean enough to suit her. I shouldn’t feel the list bit sorry on her account if her servants left her.”

Impudent little bitch! Lady Evelyn opened her mouth, then felt a nudge from Stangler. She realized she had, only moments ago, been examining her cider glass in the light. In spite of a smear on the side, she took a quick sip.

“The thieving servants didn’t get very far,” said the barmaid. “The constable came by asking us all manner of questions, but we didn’t see the least hint of any trouble. The two thieves got their just deserts, though. Someone robbed them and left their bodies to rot in the woods, not very far from here.”

“Indeed! The punishment hardly fits the crime, but if they robbed their Lady, they did put themselves in peril’s path.”

“Damn right,” said the lecher as if he were privy to the conversation. “It should put the fear of God in the souls of any who’d steal from their betters and abandon their duties.”’

His hand was covered in burn marks, the punishment of a pickpocket.

“Better to steal from a fellow thief and mind one’s place in life,” said Lady Graves with no effort to hide her sarcasm. Had that man but seen the body of Reginald, eyes plucked from his head! “To be knifed for a bit of money just shows that there is no honor among thieves.”

Stangler scowled at her, and she remembered her job was to keep quiet and let him do the talking.

“Brigitta,” the lecher shouted, though she wasn’t five feet from him. “My glass is empty!”

Lady Graves glanced around the room, as if memories should be framed on the walls and answers there for the grasping. So far, nothing had awakened her recollection of her last hour at this inn. She felt like a boat rowing against the tide, beaten back, unable to gain any forward momentum.

When Brigitta delivered the lecher’s ale, he pulled her into his lap and planted a sloppy, loud kiss on her lips. Disgusting! As if patronizing an inn entitled him to take liberties with the women who worked there!

“What are you staring at, boy? Did you fail to get your first kiss before your balls were cut off?”

She slapped the table. “Are you calling me a castrati?”

“No, just a eunuch, girly-boy. I don’t care if you can still piss standing up.”

Stangler nudged her. She remembered his coaching: ignore all stupid comments from drunks.

She rose from the table and walked to the the staircase, looking up, looking for memories of her last night here, the last night she had moved among mortals as Lady Evelyn. Now the woman she had been seemed just a ghost, a figment of her imagination. Today she was a lad in baggy breeches held up with suspenders, patched in so many places and worn so thin, she looked a pauper.

Had she ascended that staircase in an elegant gown? She’d have worn the fichu, certainly, to cover her bosom from the stares of dirty, lascivious men. From a man like Stangler, though, an admiring glance could have her casting modesty into the corner along with scarves and petticoats that impeded movement.

A rough hand on her shoulder: “Here, you, what are you up to, casing the place like a thief?”

Stangler was at the innkeeper's side faster than Emil could catch a juggling prop. “This young man," Stangler said, "was only checking to see if the stairs are as unclean as your glassware. We definitely will not be spending the night here.” He drew a coin from his coat pocket and tossed it to the barmaid, who caught it deftly. “Keep the change,” he said.

And they were off, walking fast to the road, looking back over their shoulders, then ducking into the woods, where Etzel waited to carry them home.

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