Benedikta watched him struggle, grinned, then put two fingers to her mouth and whistled.
“Allez hop, viens par ici! Giddyap, this way!”
As if the horse had just been waiting for Benedikta’s command, it started to move again.
“Just where have you learned to deal with horses like that?” Simon asked, patting Walli on the rump and trying to catch up.
“My mother comes from a family of Huguenots who fled from the French Catholics.” Benedikta brought her horse into a faster trot. “A respected family from the area around Paris with an estate and property. She learned to ride as a child and no doubt passed this love along to me. Je suis un enfant de France!” She laughed, racing off.
Simon dug his heels into Walli’s sides, trying to keep up with Benedikta, and for a brief while they rode side by side.
“France must be gorgeous!” he cried to her. “Paris! Notre Dame! Fashion! Is it true that the city blazes with the light of a thousand lanterns at night?”
“In your Schongau, I’d be pleased to see even a dozen lanterns. And people smell better in Paris.” She gave her horse a slap. “But now, enough of this foolishness. The last one to reach the edge of the clearing pays for the first round of muscatel in Wessobrunn! Allez, hue, Aramis!”
Her sorrel leapt forward and raced to the edge of the clearing, while Walli plodded along listlessly, clearly in the hope of finding a few tasty blades of grass at the forest edge.
As they approached Peißenberg, they turned left, heading north, and, two hours later crossed through a dense forest of firs interspersed with dark-green yews.
“Keep an eye on your horse. The trees are very poisonous, so make sure she doesn’t eat the leaves or the hangman will wring your neck,” Benedikta warned.
Simon nodded. He didn’t want to think what Jakob Kuisl would do to him if he had to flay his own horse. Probably, he’d stick Simon up to his neck in a vat of tannic acid. The medicus was still lost in thought, pondering how indebted he really was to the hangman, when he suddenly felt the urgent call of nature.
“Benedikta, excuse me, but I…” He smiled with embarrassment and pointed to the yews on the left. “It will take only a moment.”
“If you’ve got to go…” she said, winking. “But don’t let the bad fellows catch you with your pants down.”
Entering a thicket of yews, Simon squeezed past sharp branches and opened the buttons of his coat and trousers. When he was finished, he paused to enjoy a moment of peace and tranquility in the forest.
At this moment, Simon had the unmistakable feeling that someone was watching.
It was a warm, tickling sensation on his back; he was petrified when, a moment later, he heard a crackle behind him. Slowly, he buttoned up his trousers and moved farther back into the thicket. Instead of going back to the road, he turned left, jumped down into a ditch in front of him and crawled along on the ground parallel to the road. For protection, he picked up a branch about the length of a club, which had broken off in the blizzard. Finally, he crossed through another thicket and, in a wide circle, returned to where he’d started. Holding the club tightly, he moved forward, trying not to make a sound. Just behind a large fallen tree he came to a stop.
Ten paces in front of him, a man was leaning against a tree.
He was wearing the red Turkish trousers of a mercenary foot soldier and a gray jacket from which a sword and powder horn hung. In his right hand he held a musket like a walking stick. He was looking out at the road, where Benedikta was waiting. Suddenly, the man put his hand to his mouth and let out a very realistic-sounding caw like that of a jay. Another caw answered, then a third. The man nodded with calm satisfaction, pulled a dagger from his waistband, and began cleaning his fingernails, all the while keeping a close eye on the road.
Simon clutched the cudgel so tightly that his knuckles turned white and he had trouble swallowing. An ambush! Judging from the signals, there had to be at least three men. The physician looked around at the bushes and yews but couldn’t see any other men. They were probably hiding on the other side of the road. Simon rose cautiously, trying to formulate a plan. He had to warn Benedikta and then ride away as soon as possible! He could only hope the highwaymen didn’t have horses.
As quietly as possible, Simon crept back through the thicket of yews. The crackle of even a tiny branch sounded to him like a peal of thunder, but finally he reached the road. When he emerged from the ditch with twigs in his hair and trousers wet from the snow, Benedikta looked down at him in amusement.
“Did you find a badger hole to do your business? As far as I’m concerned, you could have just gone in the ditch.” Then she noticed the anxious expression on his face and turned serious. “What happened?”
Simon mouthed his next words. “Robbers. On both sides of the street. We have to get out of here.”
Again, one jay call followed another.
Benedikta hesitated briefly. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “As long as we’re on our horses and keep moving, they can’t catch us.” She grinned and pointed to her skirt pocket. “Don’t forget, I’m not completely defenseless. Allez!”
Her horse bounded forward and galloped away, and to Simon’s great relief, Walli promptly followed. The medicus thought he saw something move behind the trees. He expected to hear the crack of a shot, the whistle of a bullet, or the pain of one impacting his shoulder-but nothing happened.
Clearly, they had shaken off the robbers.
But how? Had he been mistaken? He’d expected that, at the very least, the men would shoot at them with their muskets or crossbows as he and Benedikta rode away. But there was no time to think. The horses raced off, and Benedikta was already entering another part of the forest far ahead. Her laughter dispelled his dark thoughts. Perhaps the highwaymen had simply decided to wait for a more promising victim.
Soon they left the yew forest and a large clearing opened up in front of them. The road climbed steeply, lined by houses on both sides. Simon breathed a deep sigh of relief. They’d reached the village of Gaispoint, and high above them, on a hill, was the Wessobrunn Monastery.
As the medicus looked around, it struck him how well maintained the houses looked. Many of them were built of stone and had obviously survived the war with little damage. Many stucco workers had settled in Gaispoint to take advantage of the booming construction business in the surrounding churches and monasteries. The physician had heard that the Gaispoint stucco workers were well known and highly regarded in Venice and as far away as Florence and Rome. At present, the stucco workers were engaged principally in restoring the neighboring Benedictine monastery to its former glory. Even though the Swedes had left the village largely untouched, they had plundered and set fire to the monastery itself.
Simon and Benedikta rode over a narrow bridge toward the rectory. The grounds seemed gloomy in the light of the setting sun. Parts of the encircling wall had collapsed, and many of the outer buildings had been burned down by the marauding soldiers. Loose stucco was crumbling from the church walls, and all that remained of the well house roof was the timber frame. Crows rose up from a heavy layer of ice covering the fountain and flew off. Only the squat bell tower standing off behind the parish church seemed to have weathered the tumultuous times.
Benedikta knocked on the heavy door of the main house, but it took a while before someone answered. A bald monk peered out at them suspiciously through a narrow crack in the door.