“But you are right. You will be hunted. Or rather, Gunther will be hunted. No one will be looking for Giselle.” She put down her empty cup with a decisive gesture. “You will stay with me until your hair grows out more. While you are staying here, we will think about what you are to do next.”
“But . . . I don’t have anything to wear but men’s clothing!” she protested weakly.
Tante Gretchen rolled her eyes. “That is scarcely a problem.” She got up, and went to a clothes press under the mattress of her cupboard bed. She brought out hunting gear, but this was of much finer make than what Giselle was wearing, and it had clearly been tailored for a woman, with fine, subtle embroidery around each of the four pocket slits in the jacket. And instead of breeches, there was a divided skirt, which some women wore to ride astride. “That was mine as a girl your age, and I’ll never fit into it again, so there is no point in my keeping it,” the old Master said, laying the jacket, vest, and skirt out on the cot and stroking the wool once with a reminiscent hand. “No, you shall have it. And you are welcome to it.”
Giselle hardly knew what to say. She was still feeling exhausted, and more than a bit befuddled, and she certainly did not like the feeling that she was being hunted—and this, clearly, was a safe haven. She stammered her thanks, but the old woman waved them off, going to the cupboard again and pulling out an old nightdress of the same size, yellowed with age, but still fine. “First, your wrists need proper bandaging. Then you can move the cot and bedding up to the loft so I have my hearth back. I am not risking a fall at my age, not to mention I don’t think I could get the bedding up there myself, much less the cot! Then you can get out of that clothing and into this. And last, you can go back to bed. Then we’ll talk about what you can do to repay me.”
“What she could do” to repay the old woman at the moment seemed to consist of doing chores and reading books to her. Giselle didn’t mind—it wasn’t as if her savior was lounging about while Giselle worked, it was more as if Tante Gretchen was taking advantage of the situation by getting twice as much work done than she could manage alone. And Tante Gretchen liked to sit by the fire and knit of an evening while Giselle read. They had very similar tastes—and Giselle had discovered to her joy that the Earth Master had Karl May books she had not yet read. No matter what else was going on, or how her feelings of guilt and worry sometimes overwhelmed her, there was always that to look forward to: the warm fire, the old woman’s cheerful companionship, and getting lost in a tale of the Wild West.
She wouldn’t hear of Giselle moving on for right now. “Let’s see what happens in the next few days,” was all she said, and although Giselle was impatient to get back to earning some money, she also was not at all eager to find herself arrested for murder.
So Tante Gretchen was kneading dough for bread in the cottage while Giselle was sitting on the doorstep, shelling new peas into a bowl in her lap, when the soldiers came. There were four of them, all mounted on some of the most ordinary-looking horses she had ever seen, and they rode up the path to Tante Gretchen’s cottage as if they knew it well. They weren’t even trying to be quiet, so by the time they dismounted at the gate and tied their horses to the fence, the old woman had left the bread dough she was kneading and had come out to stand beside Giselle, wiping her hands on her apron.
They opened the gate and trudged halfway up the path through the yard, and stopped. “Good morning, Frau Wildern,” said one who stood further along the path than the others. The sun was shining fully down on them, and Giselle wondered if they were getting warm in their wool uniforms.
“And what brings you boys here this morning?” she called, shading her eyes with her hand and peering at them. “You’re the only one I know, Hans Pedermann. What are you soldiers doing out here in the forest?”