* **
“Rennio, get up,” he hissed, tapping what looked like a giant, furry rock with his foot. “Rennio!”
Rennio didn’t move even a hair, and Gerhard was just about to give him another shove with his boot when the furry rock replied, “Do I look like a dog to you?”
“Actually…” he muttered in reply.
“If you wanted me to wake up in the middle of the night to sing you a lullaby, then you shouldn’t have kicked me out onto your doorstep to surely do several things that would not have pleased the Lord.”
Whenever Rennio spoke like he remembered that he was a bishop, Gerhard’s eyes would reflexively roll. He was the least orthodox man in the world, of that he was absolutely certain. He had claimed himself that he had only become a bishop because his uncle was very wealthy and Rennio wanted the free books that tended to come with the position.
“Come on, Rennio. I need to speak with you,” he begged, nudging him with his toe again.
“Speak.”
“In private,” Gerhard specified, looking around at the other sleeping, snoring men in blankets around the campfire.
“You’re going to have to wait until dawn then,” Rennio informed him, rolling onto his other side.
“I have a proposition for you that, if it goes well, will include a casket of wine as large as an ox,” he promised.
Rennio grumbled. “A small ox?”
“A very big one. Biggest ox you could find,” he promised, whispering with enthusiasm now. He crouched over Rennio and put out his hand. “Come on.”
Rennio, apparently more awake now that future wine was on the table, got up and wrapped his cloak around him. They marched out to where no soldiers were around anywhere to be seen in the pale moonlight.
“Alright, now we’re alone. What is this about?” Rennio grumped.
Gerhard frowned and then took a deep breath. “You’ve always been my closest friend, Rennio,” he began.
“Out with it. Stop trying to butter me up. It’s making me nervous.”
“I need you to help me fake a death,” Rennio stated clearly. “And make it so the fault could never be traced back to me.”
He could make out Rennio raising one bushy eyebrow dubiously. “Is that all?” he asked cynically. “Your death?”
“No. Not mine… hers.” Gerhard rubbed at his arm, feeling suddenly very cold and very nervous. “I can’t let her die, Rennio.”
Rennio snorted. “Of course you can’t. Don’t you think I’ve seen all those silly sketches in your trunk? Did you think I wouldn’t put together who theywere of?” He heaved a groan. “But what about the emperor? Are you just going to lie to him?”
“I think if she dresses below her current station she could walk straight up to the emperor and he’d not notice her. He knows I mean to retire into the country this year, anyway, Rennio. He’s been telling me to get married for years.”
“Yes,” Rennio agreed. “But I assure you he didn’t mean for you to marry the Princess of Hohenzollern!”
Paranoid, Gerhard looked around, shushing Rennio, and then he crossed his arms across his chest. “Rennio, she’s an innocent. She was born under an unlucky star, that is all. I won’t have her die for it.”
“You just want to bed her,” he doubted with a grumble.
“I have bedded her,” he snapped. “I want more than that. I want to marry the girl. Give her a life.” He could feel Rennio looking at him skeptically in the darkness. “I want her,” he added flatly.
“I have no doubts that you do, but it’s very difficult to go from ruler of that,” he gestured toward the steep hill that was topped with the great fortress of Hohenzollern, looking intimidating and immense in the moonlight, “to being the wife of a man with no title or birthright.”
“I think she’d surprise you,” he replied, firm in his resolve. If she could look back fondly to a week of her childhood where she was running around in the forest eating berries, then he couldn’t fathom that it would take the girl very long to assimilate to being his wife.
“She’d better, Gerhard!” Rennio snapped. “What you’re asking is dangerous. If someone was to find out that you made off with the princess, the emperor would hunt you down. He wouldn’t care at all that you were playmates as children or even that you saved his life at least once. He can’t let his enemies go unpunished.”
“He has Hohenzollern,” he replied defensively. “I am not taking anything that he needs. I am not betraying him. If we are able to fake her death, then he wouldn’t know any better.”
